LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. 



UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 



OLD SALEM 



By ELEANOR PUTNAM 



EDITED BY 

ARLO BATES 




..^.yorco- 



MAi 28 188i>7'^ 



> 






Of 



WASHl^^'•^ 



BOSTON AND NEW YORK 
HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY 

1886 



Copyright, 1886, 

Byarlo bates. 
All rights reserved. 



The Riverside Press, Cambridge i 
Electrotyped and Printed by H. O. Houghton & Co. 



For the son too young to remember her, 
have been gathered these fragments of his 
mother's work, broken by death. 



CONTENTS. 






Page 


Introdtidion 


. . 7 


Old Salem Shops 


. . 27 


A Salem Dame-School .... 


. . 43 


Two Salem Institutions . . , 


. . 63 


Salem Cupboards 


. . 68 


My Cousin the Captain . . . 


. . 103 




INTRODUCTION. 



I. 




T is with unspeakable tenderness 
and pain that I attempt to gather 
up the broken threads of this un- 
finished web, but I appreciate that per- 
sonal feeling would be out of place here, 
and that what I say must be confined to 
the subject of this volume. 

The first paper in the brief collection, 
" Old Salem Shops," was written for the 
Contributors' Club of the '' Atlantic Month- 
ly," a fact which accounts for its brevity. 
The editor gave it a place in the body of 
the magazine, and its reception was suffi- 
ciently kind to encourage the writing of 
other papers in the same vein. It was the 
writer's intention to publish a series of 



8 Introduction. 

sketches which should afterward be put 
together under the title which this volume 
bears, and she had noted down the sub- 
jects of several which were destined never 
to be written. 

" A Salem Dame-School " and ^' Salem 
Cupboards " followed in the *' Atlantic ; " 
"Two Salem Institutions" was written for 
" The Spinnet," a paper published at a 
Salem fair; while "My Cousin the Cap- 
tain " was left a fragment at her death. 

There were in her portfolio few notes, 
it being her custom to depend upon her 
remarkable memory almost entirely, but 
she had in conversation spoken of many of 
the things which it was her wish to include 
in these sketches of the quaint old town 
which she loved and where now her grave 
is made. 

The subjects she had set down were: 
" The Marine Museum," where " it was as 
if each sea-captain had lounged in and 
hustled down his contributions in any con- 
venient vacant space," "Derby and Char- 



Introduction. g 

ter Streets," "Old Burying Grounds," 
" ' New Guinea ' and Witch Hill," and "The 
Witch Records (?) ; " while besides these 
she spoke with the most genuine tenderness 
of a paper she wished to write on " Salem 
Gentlewomen." There was also some talk 
of a sketch of " Salem Oddities," to include 
some notice of " Billy Cook " and other 
erratic individuals ; and she wrote thus 
much upon " The Bundle Handkerchief : " 

" The bundle handkerchief is as essential 
a figure in Salem history as the witches 
themselves." 

" My Cousin the Captain," upon which 
she was engaged when she laid down for- 
ever her pen, was in a vein in which, from 
her extreme fondness for all things nau- 
tical, she delighted especially. The fascina- 
tion of the sea was strong upon her, and 
in some of her magazine stories she has 
shown how lively was her interest in all 
that pertains to the life of a mariner. 
There is in the history of Salem enough 
of nautical romance to excite the most 



lo Introduction. 

sluggish imagination, and far more one so 
responsive as was hers. There is an irre- 
sistible suggestiveness in the record of the 
voyages of Salem vessels to cannibal Fe- 
jee, to Zanzibar, to Mauritius, to Surinam, 
to Madagascar, to Russia, and to Calcutta. 
The fancy is aroused by the simple enu- 
meration of the cargoes the ships brought 
from far over-seas : " Wine and prunes ; " 
"nutmegs, mace and cinnamon ;" "raisins, 
almonds and sweet wines ; " " palm - oil, 
gum copal and ivory ; " "sugar, indigo and 
spices ; " or the drolly incongruous mix- 
ture, " gin, cheese and steel," brought by 
the brig Minerva from Amsterdam. There 
is, too, an opulence in the amounts paid 
for tariff — the Sumatra, a ship of but 287 
tons burden, on three cargoes from Canton 
handed over duties of ;^i28,363.i3, $138,- 
480.34 and ^140,761.96 — which throws 
a sort of halo of magnificent and fabulous 
wealth over even this prosaic side of the 
marine history of the old town. The se- 
cret voyages of Captain Jonathan Carnes 



Introduction. / / 

to Sumatra, moreover, with an allusion to 
which " My Cousin the Captain " so abrupt- 
ly closes ; the messages from Captain Ea- 
gleston, who in Southern seas caught sev- 
eral albatrosses, fastened to the neck of 
each a quill in which was a slip of paper, 
bearing the words, " Ship Leonidas, of Sa- 
lem, bound for New Zealand," and by 
means of a French vessel which recaptured 
one of the birds off the Cape of Good 
Hope, hundreds of miles away, sent tidings 
to his friends at home, who during the six 
months that had elapsed since his sailing 
had received no news of him ; the robbery 
of the Mexican by the Spanish pirate 
Pinda, with the unsuccessful attempt to 
burn alive the imprisoned crew ; the adven- 
tures of the Charles Daggett among the 
treacherous cannibals in Fejee, and in trans- 
porting the Pitcairn islanders from "sen- 
sual Tahiti " to their former home, — all 
these and many another wild tale of adven- 
ture, peril, and shipwreck might be com- 
bined to form a most thrilling chapter. It 



/2 Introduction. 

is no wonder that one who loved both Sa- 
lem and the sea should be moved by such 
a history. 

The sketch of Derby Street was one of 
the first projected, but there are scarcely 
any notes for it. In it was to figure the 
house of Mr. Forrester, where upon the 
parlor walls were painted scenes from the 
life of the owner, showing his rise from 
poverty to grandeur ; the place of his birth, 
a humble cottage in Ireland ; with his vari- 
ous places of business, the Salem wharves 
and the vessels which had brought his 
merchandise to them. The Old Ladies' 
Home, too, was to be spoken of, with rem- 
iniscences of certain of its inmates whose 
memories took hold upon the romantic and 
palmy days of the town. And there was to 
be a sketch of the strange old shop of a 
Sol Gibbs like instrument maker, which 
stood upon a corner of Derby Street, 
wherein were the relics of many a good 
ship and many a voyage; where among 
quaint rubbish from all over the world an- 



Introduction. t) 

cient mariners sat and gossiped garru- 
lously, in endless review of their past and 
tireless bewailings of the degeneracy of 
the present ; where antique chronometers 
ticked patiently, awaiting the return of 
owners whose bones were bleaching on the 
sands of islands in seas of the under world 
or " suffering a sea change " in caves be- 
neath some ocean near the poles ; where 
the wizened proprietor and the storm-beaten 
antiques who consorted with him were ir- 
resistibly suggestive of the mummies some 
adventurous Salem captain, perhaps one of 
these, had brought from Peru ; where time 
had no value save as its measure served 
to test the accuracy of venerable time- 
pieces ; and where the quadrants, the sex- 
tants, and the compasses reposing in shabby 
cases upon the dusty shelves would not 
have been out of place on the deck of the 
Flying Dutchman or the Dead Ship of 
Harpswell. " If fine old Leisure is dead," 
runs one of the scanty notes, " surely he 
spent his last days in Salem ; " and in this 



/^ Introdtiction, 

quaint nook good old Leisure may well 
have dreamed through his placid dotage. 
In the sketch of Derby Street, too, it is 
to be supposed there would have been 
mention of the famous Custom House in 
which Hawthorne wrote, and where he 
feigned to have found the manuscript of 
that greatest of all American books, " The 
Scarlet Letter ; " while it was no less in- 
tended to picture the dusky sail-lofts, fra- 
grant with the smell of new canvas and 
of tar, where were stitched on the smooth 
floor the great white sheets that were to 
be the wings of many a craft more stout 
than even the strong-penned albatross, and 
were to be mirrored in the waves of har- 
bors as far asunder as the world is wide. 
The writer of these sketches spoke more 
than once of the suggestive charm of these 
sail-lofts, where men sat upon the floor like 
Turks, sewing, with their thimbles curi- 
ously fastened in the middle of their palms, 
and where the children went for bunches of 
" thrums," to be used at home for tying up 



Introdiiction. /^ 

bundles. Lifted above the stir of Derby 
Street, the silence of the loft must have 
been doubly impressive, and have accorded 
well with the softened light which fell 
through small dusty panes, to be reflected 
from the pohshed floor and great snowy 
sails. 

But most of all would this paper have 
been likely to deal with the indefinable 
charm of the days when Derby Street was 
alive with bustle and excitement ; when 
swarthy sailors were grouped at the cor- 
ners, or sat smoking before the doors of 
their boarding-houses, their ears adorned 
with gold rings, and their hands and wrists 
profusely illustrated with uncouth designs 
in India ink ; when every shop window 
was a museum of odd trifles from the Ori- 
ent, and the very air was thick with a 
sense of excitement and of mystery. 

Of what would have been included in 
the other papers one may conjecture, but 
beyond the fact that "The Bundle Hand- 
kerchief " was to show the staid people of 



1 6 Introduction, 

Salem carrying home in that useful article 
their weekly baked beans and brown bread, 
and equally their mental food in the shape 
of books from the Athenaeum, or, indeed, 
for that matter, anything that they ever 
had to carry home at all ; and that it was 
to give a half-humorous and half-pathetic 
history of an old gentleman not unlike him 
who figures in " The Last Leaf," there is 
nothing that can be said authoritatively. 

IL 

She who wrote under the name of Elea- 
nor Putnam — a name which was in truth 
borne by her great-grandmother in maid- 
enhood — went to live in Salem in 1865, 
being then nine years old. Her ances- 
tors had dwelt there almost from the 
foundation of the town, and like all genu- 
ine Salem families cherished that feeling 
of local pride and attachment which left so 
strong a mark upon her character. Half 
a dozen years she lived here before the 
family moved temporarily to the West, in 



Introduction, , ly 

search of health for the mother. In that 
time she attended the dame-school she has 
described, spent her pennies at the quaint 
shops she has pictured, and stored in a 
memory which was wonderful for its fidel- 
ity and its exactness a thousand details of 
which we now shall have no record. 

She was naturally not a little amused 
when a Boston journal commented upon 
her second '^ Atlantic " paper : " Eleanor 
Putnam describes a Salem dame-school of 
fifty or sixty years ago in a charming es- 
say." The truth is, however, that Salem 
forms a sort of eddy, deliciously shady and 
quiet, beside the rushing stream of modern 
progress, and the state of things existing 
there a score of years ago was similar to 
that which passed away half a century 
since in more progressive communities. 

III. 

I cannot deny myself the pleasure of 
quoting here from two letters, both writ- 
ten by persons unaware of the identity of 



1 8 Introduction. 

Eleanor Putnam, and both total strangers 
to her. The first is of interest as showing 
the kindly and generous appreciation of a 
man of letters, who has himself, unhappily 
for literature, passed beyond all earthly 
work ; the second as proving how truthful 
are the pictures these essays present. 

335 East 17TH Street, 
Stuyvesant Square. 

Dear Miss Putnam : 

Pray allow me the pleasure of expressing to 
you my great admiration and enjoyment of 
your " Old Salem Shops " in the " Atlantic " for 
September, which I spoke of often to friends 
at the time of its appearance. I am led to re- 
vert to it now by having recently read Miss 
Mitford's " Our Village " and " Belford Regis." 
These I heard spoken of in my boyhood, when 
they were in great favor ; but I never saw them 
until lately among a heap of books with which 
I beguiled hours of illness. I was reminded 
at once of your sketch, — say, rather, highly fin- 
ished genre-picture, — and could not but think 
of its superiority, — superiority in everything, 
in style, in vivid portraiture, in gentle humor. 



Introduction, , 79 

And then I thought that I would venture to 
suggest to you that you should write and pub- 
lish a group of such pictures of the now — 
alas ! — fading New England life. They could 
not but be welcome ; and they would have at 
least one admiring and grateful reader. 
Sincerely yours, 

Rich. Grant White. 
Sunday, 2d Oct. '84. 

Of the second letter I have let the per- 
sonalities remain, because they concern 
only the dead and can do no harm. 

Boston, Feb, 20, 1886. 
To THE Lady who signs herself Eleanor 
Putnam. 

I have often thought of asking your proper 
address that I might thank you for the charm- 
ing tales about dear old Salem ; but the Feb- 
ruary number of the " Atlantic " " Salem Cup- 
boards" is too much for me, and I cannot 
delay thanking you, and saying what delight 
I have taken in it. I trust you will pardon 
the liberty I take in addressing you, though I 
am a stranger, for it renews my youth, makes 



20 Introduction. 

my blood thrill, and my heart beat when I 
recall my early home and see it so faithfully 
described. 

The Hersey Derbys were my first cousins. 
The old house contained stores of cut glass, 
such as you describe, which was preferred to 
silver in those days. Aunt Hersey had much 
humor and was a mimic. I remember her 
coming into our house on Court Street one 
day and describing a call at old Mrs. B.'s shop. 
Mary and Nancy were in the store. How per- 
fectly I remember them ! Severe, staid and 
formal ; talking slowly and whining over their 
private affairs, even before customers. Mary 
would say : " Mother, Miss So-and-so is com- 
ing to dinner ; what shall we have for her ? " 
After due deliberation, the old lady would 
squeak out : " Coffee and nimble-cake is a very 
pretty dinner, Mary." And so it was settled. 

The old cupboard is all so natural. At my 
father's we had stores of the ginger in blue and 
wicker work, and on the upper shelf a sticky 
fork might often be seen. I remember mamma, 
to shame me, once put the jar and fork on my 
pillow, but I, in triumph, transferred it to my 
closet and feasted on it at will. 



Introduction. -2/ 

I remember well the rock candy in such 
great quantities ; and mamma had a huge box 
of maccaroni and vermicelli from Leghorn in 
every variety of form, and as they said : — 
*' A box of such enormous size 
Great Holyoke's years would not suffice 
To eat it all before she dies." 
I have now some dainty relics, a needle-book 
with drawings in India ink, —bee-hive, etc., 
most delicately done,— and tender mottoes. 

In Mr. Hoppin's " Auton House" I see 
again our nursery : the back of the fire-place 
in iron with a pot of tulips cast on it and the 
sides always kept so nice with redding; and the 
smell of the herbs in the closet and the row of 
bottles that we would uncork and sniff till we 
came to paregoric, that would ease our pain. 

I have rambled on, but I have enjoyed it all 
so much; the " Gibraltars and Black-Jacks," 
all that you have given us, and long for more. 
Excuse my venturing to address you. I 
have been unable to walk for sixteen years, 
am seventy-nine years old, and old age may be 
pardoned for being garrulous. ... I am the 
last of my line, not even a cousin left. 
I am your friend, 



22 Introduction, 



IV. 



There is perhaps no excuse for adding 
here the following fragments, since they 
have no connection with the subject of this 
little volume. They seem to me worth 
preserving, however, and while I have de- 
nied myself the pleasure of writing a sketch 
of my wife's life, lest it might seem an 
effort forcibly to claim attention which she 
unhappily had not lived long enough to 
win, it does not appear so wholly out of 
place to insert these few extracts, which 
may help such readers as care to do so the 
better to form a correct estimate of her 
powers. The habit, already alluded to, of 
depending upon memory, has reduced her 
note-books to the most melancholy brevity. 
From what there is I have made a few se- 
lections which seem to me to show her 
delicate humor, close observation, and fe- 
licitous diction. 



Introduction. 2^ 

" Most of us would read our own caricatures 
with bland unconsciousness and be immensely 
amused thereat." 

*' Apples all gnarled and twisted, as if their 
faces were drawn awry and puckered and 
pursed up by their own sourness." 

" One may say hard words of her, but not to 
her." 

" I have often noticed in deserted ship-yards 
the flights of stairs which once led up to the 
vessel's deck, but which now, the vessel having 
slipped the ways and sailed to foreign shores, 
lead to nowhere and stop abruptly in mid-air, 
as if — like the ladder in the vision of Jacob of 
old — some one had started to build steps to 
heaven, but had failed and stopped, discouraged 
long ere he attained his end." 

" He had the face of a young Greek god ; 
as for his soul, — well, perhaps we can say no 
worse of him than that he had also the soul of 
a young Greek god." 

" She said she did it for the best, but things 
which are 'done for the best' are seldom pleas- 
ant." 

" On Kneeland Street about noon of a burn- 



24 Introduction. 

ing July day, an Italian wine-seller sat at the 
door of his little shop. The old swing door 
behind him was of a cotton which had been 
originally of a vivid orange, but which from 
standing half-open, and thus meeting irregularly 
the rays of the sun, was now exquisitely shaded 
from a dull cream tint on the hinge side to the 
original brilliant hue on the edge where was 
placed the latch. This door, made more gor- 
geous than common by the blaze of the sun's 
rays which fell upon it, served as a screen 
which set off to perfection the dark face of the 
Italian, his shock of black hair, his sleepy dark 
eyes, his crisp bushy beard, the gold rings in 
his ears, and his handsome, full throat, from 
which the shirt was carelessly rolled away. 
He was doing nothing, and doing it with a 
thoroughness only possible to an Italian or an 
African." 

" That man is not wise who tries to induce 
one woman to be kind to another on the ground 
that she is young." 

" It was, I believe, what physicians call ' sus- 
spended animation,' only that in his case the 
suspension was chronic." 



Introduction. ^5 

" It stopped raining very suddenly, diminish- 
ing from a shower of heavy drops to a thin 
mist of silver ; then the pearl gray tint of the 
sky all at once broke, and began to sweep 
away toward the northeast in long trailing lines 
of opal and amber vapor, leaving behind a 
heaven blue and cool with a pale radiance as 
of early spring-time." 

" He kept a secret as closely as a new cone 
holds its seeds, which are never delivered an 
instant before the appointed time." 

'' She had bent to kiss the baby, who was 
babbling upon the floor, and as she recovered 
her standing position a strange thing happened. 
She extended her hand in recovering her bal- 
ance, and somehow gave it a twist which at 
once transformed it from its white plumpness 
into the hand of an old woman, smooth like 
parchment and crackled finely like old china. 
It passed like a flash of lightning. Had it 
not been that both hands wore the same ring, 

a ruby set about with diamonds, — I should 

have thought that the two hands belonged to 
different persons. It was the hand of an old 
woman, but a woman in the prime of life stood 



26 Introduction, 

before me, golden-haired, pink-cheeked, bright- 
eyed, and vigorous, smoothing the folds of her 
satin gown and laughing like a girl of twenty." 

" When rats desert a sinking ship where do 
they go ? " 

" Story of the Old Ladies' Home in Derby 
Street. A crazy old woman, once a beauty 
living in the same house, finds love-letters hid- 
den behind a panel in the wall." 

V. 

Nothing that any one else can write 
will replace the Salem papers which now 
we have lost forever, and, however reluc- 
tantly, it is necessary to bring to a close 
this brief review of what it was planned to 
make this volume. It must remain a 
promise of which death prevented the 
fulfillment ; a proof, merely, of what might 
have been. 

A. B. 




OLD SALEM SHOPS. 

WONDER how many people have 
memories as vivid as mine of the 
quaint shops which a score of 
years ago stood placidly along the quiet 
streets of Salem. In the Salem of to-day 
there are few innovations. Not many 
modern buildings have replaced the time- 
honored landmarks ; yet twenty years ago 
Salem, in certain aspects, was far more 
like an old colonial town than it is now. 
When the proprietor of an old shop died 
it was seldom that a new master entered. 
Nobody new ever came to Salem, and 
everybody then living there had already 
his legitimate occupation. The old shops, 
lacking tenants, went to sleep. Their 
green shutters were closed, and they were 
laid up in ordinary without comment from 
any one. 



28 Old Salem Shops. 

I remember one shop of the variety 
known in Salem as "button stores." It 
was kept by two quaint old sisters, whose 
family name I never knew. We always 
called them Miss Martha and Miss Sibyl. 
Miss Martha was the older, and sported 
a magnificent turban, of wonderful con- 
struction. Miss Sibyl wore caps and lit- 
tle wintry curls. Both had short-waisted 
gowns, much shirred toward the belts, and 
odd little housewives of green leather, 
which hung from their apron-bindings by 
green ribbons. 

Their wares were few and faded. They 
had a sparse collection of crewels, old- 
fashioned laces, little crimped cakes of 
white wax, and emery balls in futile im- 
itation of strawberries. They sold hand- 
kerchiefs, antiquated gauze, and brocaded 
ribbons, and did embroidery stamping for 
ladies with much care and deliberation. I 
remember being once sent to take to these 
ladies an article which was to be stamped 
with a single letter. Miss Martha con- 



Old Salem Shops. 29 

suited at some length with her sister, and 
then, with an air of gentle importance, said 
to me, "Tell your mother, dear, that sister 
Sibyl will have it ready in one week, cer- 
tainly." 

On another occasion Miss Sibyl had 
chanced to give me a penny too much in 
change ; discovering which before I was 
well away, I returned to the shop and told 
her of the mistake. Miss Sibyl dropped 
the penny into the little till, — so slender 
were the means of these old gentlewomen 
that I believe even a penny was of im- 
portance to them, — and in her gentle 
voice, she asked, " What is your name, 
dear } " and when I told her she replied, 
approvingly, "Well, you are an honest 
child, and you may go home and tell your 
mother that Miss Sibyl said so." To this 
commendation she added the gift of a bit 
of pink gauze ribbon, brocaded with little 
yellow and lavender leaves, and I returned 
to my family in a condition of such con- 
scious virtue that I am convinced that I 



JO Old Salem Shops. 

must have been quite insufferable for some 
days following. 

The only article in which these ladies 
dealt which specially concerned us chil- 
dren was a sort of gay-colored beads, such 
as were used in making bags and reticules 
— that fine old bead embroidery which 
some people show nowadays as the work 
of their great-grandmothers. These beads 
were highly valued by Salem children, and 
were sold for a penny a thimbleful. They 
were measured out in a small mustard- 
spoon of yellow wood, and it took three 
ladlefuls to fill the thimble. I cannot for- 
get the air of placid and judicial gravity 
with which dear Miss Martha measured 
out a cent's worth of beads. 

One winter day Miss Sibyl died. The 
green shutters of the shop were bowed 
with black ribbons, and a bit of rusty black 
crape fluttered from the knob of the half- 
glass door, inside of which the curtains 
were drawn as for a Sunday. For a whole 
week the shop was decorously closed. 



Old Salem Shops. ^i 

When it was reopened, only Miss Martha, 
a little older and grayer and more gently 
serious, stood behind the scantily filled 
show-case. My mother went in with me 
that day and bought some laces. Miss 
Martha folded each piece about a card and 
secured the ends with pins, after her usual 
careful fashion, and made out the quaint 
little receipted bill with which she always 
insisted on furnishing customers. As she 
handed the parcel across the counter she 
answered a look in my mother's eyes. 

" I did not think she would go first,'* she 
said, simply. "Sibyl was very young to 
die." 

In the following autumn came Miss 
Martha's turn to go. Then the shutters 
were closed forever. Nobody took the 
store. The winter snows drifted un- 
checked into the narrow doorway, and the 
bit of black crape, affixed to the latch by 
friendly hands, waved forlornly in the 
chilly winds and shivered in the air, — a 
thing to affect a child weirdly, and to be 



^2 Old Salem Shops. 

hastened past with a "creepy" sensation 
in the uncertain grayness of a winter twi- 
light. 

Another well-remembered Salem shop 
was the little establishment of a certain 
Mrs. Birmingham. This store was really 
a more joyous and favorite resort for chil- 
dren than the aristocratic precincts of Miss 
Martha and Miss Sibyl. One reason for 
this was that, while two gentler souls never 
lived, these ladies belonged to a generation 
when children were kept in their places, 
and were to be seen and not heard. This 
fact flavored their kindly treatment of 
young people, and we felt it. Then, too, 
save for the beads, their wares were not 
attractive to little folk ; and, lastly, there 
was a constraint in the prim neatness, the 
mystic, half-perceived odor of some old 
Indian perfume, and the general air of de- 
cayed gentility that hung about the shop 
of the two old gentlewomen, which per- 
tained not at all to the thoroughly vulgar 
but alluring domain of Mrs. Birmingham. 



Old Salem Shops. j^ 

This shop was not on Essex Street, the 
street of shops, but upon a quiet by-way, 
devoted to respectable dwelling-houses, 
and for this reason we were free to visit 
Mrs. Birmingham's whenever we chose. 
It was a tiny house, and I believe it had 
beside it a very shabby and seedy garden. 
There were two windows with green 
wooden shutters, and a green door with 
the upper half of glass. This was once 
the fashionable manner of stores in Salem. 
Inside the door was a step, down which 
one always fell incontinently ; for even if 
one remembered its existence, it was so 
narrow and the door closed on its spring so 
suddenly behind one that there was no 
choice but to fall. The very name of Bir- 
mingham brings up the curious odor of 
that shop. There was, above all, a close 
and musty and attic-like perfume. Min- 
gling with this were a perception of cellar 
mould, a hint of cheese, a dash of tobacco 
and cabbage, a scent of camphor, a sus- 
picion of snuff, and a strong undercurrent 



^4 Old Salem Shops. 

of warm black gown scorched by being 
too near an air-tight stove. 

Mrs. Birmingham's stock equaled But- 
tercup's in variety. Along the floor in 
front of the left-hand counter was always 
a row of lusty green cabbages and a basket 
of apples. A small glass show-case held 
bread and buns and brick-shaped sheets of 
livid gingerbread. If one came to buy 
milk, Mrs. Birmingham dipped it from a 
never empty pan on the right-hand coun- 
ter, wherein sundry hapless flies went, like 
Ophelia, to a moist death. Then there 
were ribbons, and cotton laces ; needles, 
pins, perfumed soaps, and pomatums. 
There were a few jars of red-and-white 
peppermint and cinnamon sticks, a box of 
pink corncake, — which Mrs. Birmingham 
conscientiously refused to sell to children, 
for fear the coloring matter might be poi- 
sonous, — and, in season and out, on a line 
above the right-hand counter hung a row 
of those dismal creations, the valentines 
known as "comic." All these articles, 



Old Salem Shops. ^5 

though shabby and shop-worn enough, 
probably, possessed for us children a 
species of fascination. There was a gla- 
mour in the very smell before referred to, 
and the height of our worldly ambition 
was to have a shop "just like Mrs. Bir- 
mingham's." 

The things for which we sought Mrs. 
Birmingham's were, however, chiefly of 
two sorts. The first was a kind of small 
jointed wooden doll, about three inches 
high. In the face these generally looked 
like Mrs. Birmingham, and they had little 
red boots painted on their stubby feet. 
These ugly little puppets cost a cent apiece, 
and were much prized as servant dolls, 
nurses particularly, because their arms 
would crook, and they could be made to 
hold baby dolls in a rigid but highly sat- 
isfactory manner. This flexibility of limb 
had also, by the by, its unpleasant side; 
for my brother Tom had a vicious habit, 
if ever the baby-house were left unguarded, 
of bending the doll's joints, and leaving 



^6 Old Salem Shops, 

the poor little manikins in all manner of 
ungainly and indecorous attitudes. An- 
other thing which could be bought for one 
cent — the limit of our purses when we 
went shopping, and it required six or seven 
of us to spend this sum — was a string of 
curious little beads made of red sealing- 
wax. They were somehow moulded on the 
string while warm, and could not be 
slipped off. We really did not like them 
very well, yet we were always buying them, 
and despite our experience trying to slip 
them from the string. 

There was a bell fastened to the top 
of Mrs. Birmingham's shop door, which 
jangled as one precipitately entered, and 
summoned Mrs. Birmingham from an 
inner room. Mrs. Birmingham was a stout 
Irishwoman, with black eyes, fat hands, 
and a remarkably fiery nose. She wore a 
rusty black gown — the same, probably, 
which was always scorching before the 
stove in the back room — and a false front 
dark as the raven's wing. I believe she 



Old Salem Shops, ^7 

must have worn some sort of cap, because, 
without recalling just where she had them, 
I never think of her without a distinct im- 
pression of dark purple ribbons. She was 
by no means an amiable woman, and in 
serving us she had a way of casting our 
pennies contemptuously into the till which 
was humiliating in the extreme. She had 
likewise a habit of never believing that we 
had a commission right, and persisted in 
sending us home to make sure that we 
were sent for a ten and not a five cent loaf, 
or for one and not two dozen of eggs. 
This was painful and crushing to our 
pride, but the bravest never rebelled 
against Mrs. Birmingham. My brother 
used, indeed, to lurk around the corner a 
few minutes, and then return to the shop 
without having gone home ; but I always 
feared Mrs, Birmingham's sharp black 
eyes, and felt that a dies ires would cer- 
tainly come for Tom, when all would be 
discovered. 

In addition to the shop Mrs. Birming- 



^8 Old Salem Shops. 

ham conducted an intelligence office in the 
back room. I never saw one of the girls, 
nor knew of any person's going to Mrs. 
Birmingham to seek intelligence ; but 
sometimes we heard laughter, and very 
often Mrs. Birmingham's deep bass voice 
exclaimed, ** Mike, be off wid yer jokin' 
now ! Let alone tellin' stories til the gur- 
rels ! " 

" Mike " was Mr. Birmingham, a one- 
legged man, whom I never saw. We knew 
that he was one-legged because Tom had 
seen him, and we secretly believed this to 
be the reason of Mrs. Birmingham's 
dressing in mourning. We children had 
asked and been told the nature and pur- 
pose of an intelligence office, and yet there 
was ever a sort of uncanny mystery about 
that back room, where unseen girls 
laughed, and Mr. Birmingham was always 
being told to "be off wid his jokin'." 

But tempora mtttantitr, Alas for Mike ! 
He is off with all joking now for good. 
Alas, too, for Mrs. Birminojham ! I cannot 



Old Salem Shops. ^g 

believe that she died, she was so invinci- 
ble ; but she is gone. The rusty black 
gown, the purple ribbons, and the ruddy- 
nose have passed somewhere into the shad- 
ows of oblivion. 

One more shop there was in which, at 
a certain season, the souls of the children 
rejoiced. It was not much of a shop at 
ordinary times ; indeed, it was but a small 
and unnoticeable building just around a 
corner of Essex Street. It was only at 
holiday time that it blossomed out of insig- 
nificance. This was before the days of any 
extent of holiday decoration, and very lit- 
tle in the way of Christmas trimming was 
done by Salem tradesmen. The season 
was celebrated with decorous merriment in 
our homes, but almost no church adorn- 
ment was seen, and most of the shops re- 
laxed not from their customary Salem air 
of eminent and grave respectability. No 
butcher sent home a spray of holly with 
the goose, and no Christmas cards dropped, 
as now, from the packages of baker or can- 



^o Old Salem Shops. 

dlestick maker. It was therefore the more 
delightful to witness the annual transfor- 
mation of the little shop around the Essex 
Street corner. The very heart and soul 
of Christmastide must have dwelt in the 
plump body of the man who kept that 
shop. His wooden awning was converted 
into a perfect arbor, under which the front 
of his little store showed as an enchanted 
cavern of untold beauty ; a bower of lusty 
greenery, aglow at night with the starry 
brilliance of many candles, gay with the 
scarlet berries of holly, set off by the 
mystic mistletoe, and rich with Aladdin 
treasures of sugary birds and beasts, ropes 
of snowy popped corn, bewildering braids, 
twists and baskets of pink-and-white sugar, 
golden oranges, — a rarer fruit then than 
now, — white grapes in luscious clusters, 
and bunches of those lovely cherries of 
clear red barley candy with yellow broom 
corn for stems. 

After all, though, it was not so much 
that the wares were more delightful than 



Old Salem Shops. 41 

those kept by other folk. Probably the 
very same things could have been bought 
at any fruit store. It was simply that this 
tiny shop and its plump, red-cheeked owner 
were overflowing with the subtle and joy- 
ous spirit of keeping holiday. We children 
used always to call his place " the Christ- 
mas shop ; " and I well remember the 
thrill of joy which ran over me when, re- 
turning from school one afternoon, I saw 
my own parents entering the jovial pre- 
cincts. I sped home on winged feet to 
tell the other children that " mother and 
father were in the Christmas shop ; " and 
we all sat about the fire in the twilight 
and ''guessed" what they were buying, 
and reveled in the dear delights which 
were to result from a visit to that treasure 
house. 

Where is he now, that child-like man who 
loved the holidays .^ The merry wight was 
twenty years before his time, but it warms 
one's heart to think of him to-day. Alas, 
a visit to Salem last year showed his 
wooden awning torn away, and in his dis- 



42 Old Salem Shops. 

mantled bower a dry and wizened stationer 
among law books and school-room furnish- 
ings. What a direful change from the 
halcyon days of old ! I wonder that the 
chubby ghost of the former owner does 
not walk o' nights to bemoan the times 
that are no more. 

The shop of Miss Martha and Miss 
Sibyl, too, seemed to be entirely done 
away with, and Mrs. Birmingham's, al- 
though still standing, was but a wreck. I 
would gladly have bought there, for old 
times' sake, a jointed doll or a string of 
sealing-wax beads ; but the green wooden 
shutters were closed, the green door sunken 
sadly on its hinges, its glass half grossly 
boarded. The grass grew high before the 
doorstone. The mossy roof was concave. 
The chimney was almost tottering. The 
little shop was drawing itself together and 
dying ; asking no sympathy of the be- 
holder, but meeting its appointed fate with 
that gray and silent resignation which 
alone is considered the proper thing in 
Salem society. 




43 

A SALEM DAME-SCHOOL. 

N English journal recently devoted 
some space to a discussion of the 
so-called " dame-school " of the rus- 
tic district, and concluded that its virtue, 
if indeed it possessed any, was of the 
smallest. It appears from this article that, 
while the authorities urge the superior ben- 
efit and training to be found in the parish 
schools, the villagers, with the doggedness 
of true lower-class ignorance, persist in 
sending their children to the old dame, — 
the same, perchance, who taught them 
their own letters thirty or forty years be- 
fore, and who depends upon the pittance 
earned by her labors to keep herself alive 
and out of the parish workhouse. 

Certainly all this is most ungrateful and 
vicious of the peasantry, and if they were 
a little more intelligent they would see that 



44 ^ Salem Dame-School. 

they have really no right to cut off the 
educational advantages of their children, 
just for the sake of a snuffy old woman, 
who makes her pupils sing the multiplica- 
tion table through their noses, and who 
calls z "izzard." It is, however, a singular 
fact that this conservative clinging to old 
methods is not confined to English plough- 
men, for it was not long ago that a well- 
known American divine spoke very warm- 
ly, at a meeting of the Round Table Club, 
in favor of the old methods of teaching. 
A lady of high breeding and of rather 
unusual culture added her opinion, say- 
ing, — 

" I want my boy to learn his letters ex- 
actly as I did, from a primer laid upon his 
teacher's knee ; and I want the letters to 
be pointed out with a great brass pin, as 
mine were, and no other way." 

Such of us as have ever been to one of 
these dame-schools must, I think, always 
hold them in kindly and loving remem- 
brance, and particularly is this true in re- 



A Salem DameSchool. ^5 

gard to the dame-schools of Salem. In 
this ancient city these schools differed 
from their English counterparts in being 
kept by gentlewomen for the benefit of 
well-born children. The lower classes at- 
tended the public schools. In those days 
it would have been unutterably vulgar to 
allow one's children to go to any but a pri- 
vate school until they were old enough to 
enter the higher grades. 

Perhaps the most exclusive of all these 
private schools was one kept by a pair 
of gentlewomen living in the upper and 
eminently respectable portion of Essex 
Street. Their name was not Witherspoon, 
but for purposes of disguise it may be well 
to call it thus. The Misses Witherspoon's 
school was not opened to whomsoever 
might chance to knock. Only an intro- 
duction by some person with untarnished 
'scutcheon, who could vouch for one's pos- 
session of an undoubted great-grandfather, 
could gain admission to this small but ar- 
istocratic symposium. I have reason to 



46 A Salem Dame-School. 

believe that I was not accepted without 
a thorough examination of family docu- 
ments, and that the scale was finally turned 
in my favor by the production of an an- 
cestress who was down in the witch rec- 
ords as having testified against some poor 
old goody or other, and signed " Phoebe 
Chandler, her -}- mark." Once a pupil at 
the Misses Witherspoon's school, however, 
one's social superiority was firmly estab- 
lished forever. In after years one might 
elope with a grocer, become a spiritualis- 
tic medium, or start a woman's bank, but 
one could never be regarded as quite be- 
yond the pale who could claim ever to 
have been admitted to the select circle at 
the Misses Witherspoon's. 

Our way to school lay along the quieter 
part of Essex Street. We always stopped 
to sharpen our slate-pencils by rubbing 
them upon the granite bases of the great 
columns before Mechanic's Hall, and there 
was one little drug shop before which we 
always loitered to admire the crimson and 



A Salem Dame-School. 4y 

purple jars which adorned the windows. 
The quaint Httle house where the witches 
were tried was attached by one corner to 
this shop. It was a quiet and common- 
place building, occupied at that time by a 
maker and mender of sun-umbrellas. It 
stood back in a green yard, and from an 
upper window projected, for a sign, a tri- 
colored parasol. There was nothing at all 
uncanny about the silent, weather-beaten 
old house, yet we eyed it askance, and 
once felt a thrill of genuine horror at the 
gaunt apparition of a black cat stealing 
with soft feet over the gray roof. 

The Misses Witherspoon's house faced 
Essex Street, but not to ruin the front 
stair carpet we always went in by a door 
which opened into the little side-yard. 
This brought us into the kitchen, from 
which the back stairs ascended. In order 
that we might not look profanely upon the 
domestic priestess of the household, a long 
curtain of gay-colored patch was hung be- 
side the stairway, and we were further- 



48 A Salem Dame-School. 

more charged not to look over the top of 
it when we reached a height upon the 
stairs which made this possible. As a 
natural result, the space behind the cur- 
tain became a sort of Bluebeard's Cham- 
ber, and one inevitably did peep now and 
then, though one never saw anything more 
wonderful than Miss Abby Witherspoon 
wiping tea-cups. 

The stairs led directly into a little back 
chamber, in which we hung our outside 
garments, and from this chamber we en- 
tered the school-room. This was a low, 
square apartment in the left-hand front 
corner of the house, having two windows 
on Essex Street, and I think only one 
which looked upon the side-yard. The 
walls had a wooden dado painted white, 
while the paper, in brown and blue, re- 
peated a meaningless pattern. There were 
two rows of single desks, with hard, slip- 
pery little yellow chairs. These were for 
the girls. There was one row of seats 
for boys, — the female sex was the dom- 



A Salem Dame-School. 4g 

inant one at the Misses Witherspoon's, — 
and that was decorously removed to the 
furthest possible limit. The Misses With- 
erspoon had no great liking for boys. 
They regarded them always with sus- 
picion, as one might a Norwich torpedo, 
and I do not believe that they ever came 
wholly to consider it proper to allow them 
to attend the school at all. 

There were three Misses Witherspoon. 
The oldest, Miss Emily, was rather severe 
in outward appearance, with an upright 
figure and remarkably keen dark eyes. 
One fancied that she might have been 
handsome as a young woman, but some- 
thing too sharp and clever with her tongue. 
She taught arithmetic, and put down on a 
little slate marks for our misdemeanors. I 
can hear now the brisk tap of her pencil, 
and the measured and awful " Little girls, 
my sharp eye is on you ! " Sometimes 
this remark was personal instead of gen- 
eral, and dire indeed was the shame which 
overwhelmed that one of us whom she 



^o A Salem Dame-School, 

named. Miss Lucy, the second sister, was 
not made of such stuff as Miss Emily. 
She was milder of face and gentler of 
voice, and had a kindly, caressing way with 
those pupils whose youth forced them to 
spell out their lessons from a book upon 
her knee. The third sister, Miss Abby, 
was the housekeeper, and never appeared 
in the school-room. All the sisters wore 
scant-skirted gowns, and their hair was 
scalloped low over their ears and turned 
up oddly behind to a tight fastening of 
shell combs. 

At recess we did not go to romp rudely 
out-of-doors, but amused ourselves in the 
house with A Ship from Canton and The 
Genteel Lady, as became well-bred chil- 
dren. An exception was made in favor of 
the boys, who were told to go out into the 
yard to shout. Miss Emily seemed to 
think that boys must go somewhere oc- 
casionally to shout, as a whale must come 
up to blow. The boys never did shout. I 
fancy they were too much depressed by 



A Salem Dame-SchooL 5/ 

the great gentility of everything. There 
were but two of them, and they generally 
sat on a deserted hen-coop and banged 
their heels and looked very dismal till the 
little bell tinkled for them to come in. 
When there had been a fall of moist snow, 
the boys would sometimes snowball each 
other in a perfunctory way, being bidden 
to the sport by Miss Lucy ; and on such 
occasions we of the gentler sex were al- 
lowed to go and look upon the stirring 
sight from the back-chamber window. 

The elder of these two boys was a tall, 
very pale, light-haired lad, who was called 
by Miss Emily " Danyell." He had a 
highly satisfactory disease of the eyes, 
which often prevented him from studying 
for an entire day, but which was fortu- 
nately not aggravated by drawing pictures 
on the slate and making Jacob's ladders. 
On a Wednesday, when the girls all sewed, 
Danyell did a deed without a name by 
means of four pins stuck into a spool and 
some bits of colored worsted. We heard 



^2 A Salem Dame-SchooL 

that he was making a lamp-mat for his 
aunt, but I fear it was never finished, for 
the other boy, one direful day, called Dan- 
yell " a sissy knitting a night-cap for his 
granny," and, although he was obliged to 
stand for some time in a corner as a pun- 
ishment, I think the iron of his sneering 
words entered the soul of Danyell ; at all 
events, the spool disappeared. 

This same " other boy," whose name has 
entirely faded from my memory, was de- 
cidedly more masculine in character than 
Danyell. He was a short, fat lad, and he 
wore a bottle-green jacket, which was cov- 
ered with brass buttons, and fitted as 
tightly as Tommy Traddles' own. His 
hair was remarkably thick, and he was a 
very sullen boy, with a revengeful disposi- 
tion. It was his standing grievance that 
he went to a private school. He one day 
confided to me that his cousin, who went 
to the Broad Street school, had been 
thrown down in a foot-ball rush, and had 
had three teeth knocked in. He added 



A Salem Dame-School. 5^ 

that a fellow could have some fun at a pub- 
lic school, but that Miss Witherspoon's was 
a baby-class. I did not like this slur on 
our dear little school, and I totally disa- 
greed with the sullen boy as to what was 
fun. A short time after this Danyell was 
withdrawn from the Misses Witherspoon's 
to go to an academy somewhere, and the 
green-jacketed boy was left to sit in a 
row by himself, to go out to shout alone at 
recess, and to sit gloomily by himself on 
the hen-coop and swing his heels. 

A certain air of gentle good-breeding 
prevailed at the Misses Witherspoon's 
school, which affected the children so far 
that quarrels and sharp words seem to 
have been practically unknown. This may 
have been owing partly to the fact that we 
were always under the eyes of our teach- 
ers, even at recess ; but it is quite true 
that we were little gentlewomen in school, 
whatever we may have been out of it. 
There are, for example, few schools to-day 
where a child made conspicuous by her 



^4 ^ Salem Dame-School. 

dress could escape unkindly jests and un- 
timely displays of wit from her mates. It 
chanced to be my lot at this time to be 
arrayed in the cast-off raiment of a pair of 
venerable great-aunts, whose taste in fab- 
rics was, to say sooth, a little antiquated. 
Accordingly, while other children wore 
warm-colored plaids and soft cashmeres of 
lovely hues, I was clad in gowns of dull 
browns and smutty purples, or, still worse, 
in flowered chintzes, which even in those 
days looked hopelessly old-fashioned, and 
resembled upholstery stuffs. My rubbers, 
too, instead of being of the shiny, blue- 
lined sort so dear to childish souls, were 
literally what Miss Lucy called "gum- 
shoes," being made of pure rubber spread 
while hot over a last. They had an im- 
pression of a clover leaf stamped on each 
toe. After a little wear ugly pits began to 
appear in the rubber, as if the shoes had 
had small-pox. One side was thicker than 
the other, and when taken off they closed 
in a hateful way, and persisted in lying 



A Salem Dame-School. ^^ 

upon the side. I used to think I could 
have borne the other peculiarities with res- 
ignation, but there was something partic- 
ularly aggravating in having one's rubbers 
shut up when taken from the feet. Other 
children had neat little twine school-satch- 
els, but I used the old green baize bag in 
which my grandfather had carried his law 
papers. It was so long and I so short that 
it nearly touched the ground as I walked, 
and my book and my apple rolled about 
unpleasantly in the bottom. In these days, 
what rude sport would not be directed by 
school-girls against a child with such odd 
belongings ! But so perfect was the kindly 
good-breeding of the little dame-school that 
I never remember a smile or significant 
glance, though I must have been indeed an 
odd and antiquated figure. 

Beside these invaluable teachings of 
kindness and courtesy the lessons were 
few and simple. We read and spelled and 
wrote copies on our slates. We chanted 
the multiplication table to an "adapted" 



^6 A Salem Dame-School. 

Yankee Doodle. We learned addition and 
subtraction by an abacus, which was an 
article like a wire broiler strung with col- 
ored wooden beads, and which had the ef- 
fect of at once destroying any possibility 
of original effort on the part of the pupil. 
When we were marked for any misde- 
meanor we had to go to Miss Emily and 
ask what we should do to " make up our 
marks." Before doing this it was the fash- 
ion to cry — or pretend to cry — for a 
few moments, with one's head resting upon 
the desk. I do not think any of us ever 
really shed a tear, but it was a perfunctory 
way we had of showing our sense of the 
disgrace of having a mark. The " making 
up a mark " was by no means a heavy 
penance. It usually consisted of writing 
one's name ten times, or making some fig- 
ures, or " doing sums " on a slate. 

We recited in arithmetic to Miss Emily, 
but as we had all sorts of odd books each 
child was in a class by herself. Most of 
the pupils had arithmetics of the compara- 



A Salem Dame-SchooL ^y 

tively modern sort, wherein were rows of 
pinks and apples, and little sparrows oblig- 
ingly sitting on fences in the twos and 
threes necessary for teaching the first two 
of the four simple rules. My own book, 
however, was of a far earlier time, rum- 
maged out of the attic for my special use. 
It was a thin, brown volume, with an hon- 
est enough outside, but the contents were 
of a peculiarly misleading and beguiling 
character. It opened with an apparently 
artless tale of an old woman whose name 
was Jane, who lived " all alone by herself 
in a small hut upon the lea." She was 
further described as being very poor, — so 
poor that she depended for her living upon 
selling the few little things raised in her 
tiny garden patch and the eggs laid by her 
three speckled hens. The wind blew about 
her humble cot, and in winter time often 
drove the snow through the cracks in the 
old walls. Jane was, however, a good and 
thrifty old woman, and did her best to 
make an honest living. Each of her spec- 



5^ A Salem Dame-School. 

kled hens laid her a nice white egg every 
day : now how many days would it take 
for old Jane to save a dozen eggs to 
carry to market ? All the problems in the 
book were of this same deceitful sort, and 
the way in which the youthful attention 
was ensnared by the semblance to a tale, 
and then suddenly brought up by a point- 
blank demand of "how much" or "how 
many," was calculated to kill forever one's 
faith in human nature. 

In addition to our book lessons, we were 
taught various quaint little accomplish- 
ments, such as courtes3dng prettily and the 
like, and every Wednesday Miss Lucy in- 
structed us in needlework. A brother of 
the ladies had been a captain in the East 
India merchant service. We children were 
dimly aware of a never quite dissipated 
odor of sandal-wood and camphor about 
the old house, — there was always a waft 
of it when the front entry door was opened, 
— and we believed that the guest chamber 
contained much treasure in the way of fans, 



A Salem Dame-School, 59 

silks, and embroidered crape shawls. We 
never saw anything, however, except on 
some afternoons, when we were judged to 
be especially deserving, and were rewarded 
by the sight of a whale's tooth curiously 
carved, an ivory-tinted ostrich ^gg, and a 
lump of golden amber in which a tiny 
hapless fly was mysteriously imprisoned. 
These treasures, although not at all un- 
common in Salem, the seat of the old East 
India trade, yet had always a mystic charm 
for us. I recall now the delightful air of 
pride with which the sisters would refer to 
"our brother. Captain Witherspoon," and 
the tone, slightly tinged with incredulity, 
with which they described to us the man- 
ners and customs of foreign lands. I have 
seen much amber since that time, but none 
with the magic charm which surrounded 
that bit held on dear Miss Lucy's palm, or 
seriously rubbed upon Miss Lucy's silk 
apron and made to attract bits of paper 
scattered on the table. 

The one holiday which was held in high 



6o A Salem Dame-School, 

favor by our teachers was New Year's Day. 
Miss Lucy told us that her mother used to 
receive many visitors upon that day, and 
that the sisters wished always to keep it as 
long as she lived. At this time it was the 
custom for two of the pupils to visit the 
homes of the others, and collect a certain 
small sum from each as a holiday gift to 
our teachers. This sum was neatly in- 
closed in an envelope, and handed to Miss 
Emily, with a wish for a happy New Year. 
It was always received with a well-bred 
air of surprise, though the gift had been 
collected and presented in exactly the 
same manner ever since the school was 
opened. 

On the other hand, our teachers had a 
surprise of like sort for us. After the 
morning devotions, we were marshaled 
into an orderly line, and conducted down 
the back stairs and through the kitchen to 
the door of the sunny parlor, where old 
Madam Witherspoon sat. She was a tiny 
and rigidly dignified old lady, in a scant 



A Salem Dame-School. 6i 

black satin gown and a white lace cap. 
Before crossing the threshold each one of 
us was required to draw out her dress- 
skirts correctly, make a courtesy, and 
say,— 

'•' I wish you a happy New Year, Madam 
Witherspoon." 

To this she replied by a stately bow. 
Before her, upon a small table, was ranged 
a collection of gifts, from which we were 
allowed to choose. The first year I was in 
the school there were knives and harmoni- 
cums for the boys, and for the girls little 
cabinets painted red and quite sticky with 
varnish, and dolls so stiff and antiquated 
and with such old-fashioned faces that I 
cannot imagine where they were discov- 
ered, unless the old ladies had conjured 
them out of the memory of some shop of 
their childhood. There clung to these 
gifts, though we had prettier ones at home, 
the same aroma of quaint delight which ex- 
haled from everything about the charming 
old house. After this ceremony we were 



62 A Salem Dame-School. 

graciously dismissed, and the rest of the 
day was our own. 

It may, perhaps, be true that there was 
no great wisdom to be gained at the little 
dame-school. Our lessons were few and 
simple, and the methods were undoubtedly 
old-fashioned. However, what we learned 
we learned thoroughly, and there were les- 
sons not to be found in books to be gained 
from the daily example of the two fine 
old gentlewomen, with their rigid ideas of 
right and wrong and the quaintly elegant 
manners of an age gone by. 

Many are the children, now grown and 
scattered, who have sat under their gentle 
sway, and surely not one of them can think 
to-day without a thrill of kindly affection 
of the little dame-school in the gray old 
house on Essex Street. 





TWO SALEM INSTITUTIONS. 

]0 history of the charming and ven- 
erable town of Salem would be 
complete which omitted the men- 
tion of those two purely Salem institutions, 
Black-jacks and Gibraltars. They possess 
all the prestige and dignity of respectable 
age. They are no modern and frivolous 
confection, such as cream caramels or 
chocolates duchesse. Our fathers knew 
Black-jack. Gibraltars met with the se- 
date approval of our grandmothers. Black- 
jacks and Gibraltars are prehistoric. 

Since there may chance to be alive some 
free-born American who does not know 
these highly proper confections, it is, per- 
haps, as well to state that a Black-jack is 
a generous stick of a dark and saccharine 
compound which combines a variety of 
flavors. In tasting Black-jack you imagine 



64 Two Salem Institutions. 

that you detect a hint of maple syrup, a 
trace of butter, a trifle of brown sugar and 
molasses, and a tiny fancy of the whole 
mixture's having been burnt on to the 
kettle. Make no mistake, however. This 
burnt flavor is not accidental, but inten- 
tional. It is one of the mysteries, not par- 
ticularly pleasant perhaps, but it is the cor- 
rect Black-jack flavor, and no Black-jack 
worthy of the name would consent to be 
without it. To the youthful palate Black- 
jack possesses a taste at once sweet and 
bitter, rich and slightly medicinal, but alto- 
gether joyous and delightsome. 

The Gibraltar, on the other hand, is a 
white and delicate candy, flavored with 
lemon or peppermint, soft as cream at one 
stage of its existence, but capable of hard- 
ening into a consistency so stony and so 
unutterably flinty-hearted that it is almost 
a libel upon the rock whose name it bears. 
The Gibraltar is the aristocrat of Salem 
confectionery. It gazes upon chocolate 
and sherbet and says : — 



Two Salem Institutions. <^5 

** Before you were, I was. After you are 

not, I shall be." 

Black-jack decidedly has not that air of 
exclusiveness which marks the Gibraltar. 
Black-jack has about it a reckless and some- 
what riotous devil-may-carishness. It is 
preeminently the joy of the youthful. It 
satisfies young ambition. It fills all one's 
desires as to stickiness and sweetness. It 
is of convenient size if one be generously 
disposed to offer bites. It is a consoler of 
grief, and a sympathizer in time of joy. 

The Gibraltar is the daintier sweet- 
meat. One may eat a dozen — could one 
be so ill-bred — without soiling one's finger 
tips. The Gibraltar, although well loved 
in childhood, grows with our growth, ever 
increasing in value through the years, to 
become in time the cherished companion 
of our age. The taste in flavors is apt to 
change, lemon being preferred by youth. 
Indeed, I remember the pathetic saying of 
a charming old Salem dame : -— 

" I know I must be growing old, because 

5 



66 Two Salem Institutions. 

2i peppermint Gibraltar is so comforting to 
me!" 

It is related of a Salem lady who went 
abroad for an extended tour that she car- 
ried with her a plenteous supply of Gibral- 
tars, and that whenever she found herself 
feeling lonely, or ill with home-longing, 
she ate a Gibraltar, and was straightway 
consoled. 

The Gibraltar is the confection of age, 
to the exclusion of Black-jack. One could 
not imagine my dear old friend, Miss Mary- 
Ellen, rioting in the sticky delight of Black- 
jack, but I think she was never without a 
neatly wrapped Gibraltar in her work, 
basket, which from time to time she nibbled 
with much dignity and serious enjoyment. 

In spite of their differences of constitu- 
tion, however. Black-jack and Gibraltar are 
firm friends, united by the bonds of age 
and long companionship. Together they 
have lived. Together they have rejoiced 
the souls of generations. Witch Hill may 
blow away ; the East India Museum may 



Two Salem Institutions, 6y 

be swallowed up in earth ; Charter Street 
Burying Ground may go out to sea ; but as 
long as a single house remains standing in 
Salem Village, so long will Black-jack and 
Gibraltar wisely reign, and retain their 
honorable place in the inmost hearts of the 
Salem people. 





SALEM CUPBOARDS. 

HERE were cupboards in Salem. 
Whether they are there still, or 
have been built up, or pulled down, 
or swept away, in the march of modern im- 
provement, I know not, but in my child- 
hood there were cupboards in Salem. 

They were, moreover, real cupboards ; 
no after-thoughts, built across the end of 
an entry here or the corner of a room 
there, — places into which to huddle um- 
brellas and overcoats, or to hustle mend- 
ing and children's litter out of the sight of 
visitors. Salem cupboards were always in- 
tentional. The builder understood his re- 
sponsibility, and acted accordingly. The 
housewife regarded her cupboards as the 
inner and most sacred portion of her trust. 
It was no light task even to keep the keys 
always counted and polished. As for los- 



Salem Cupboards. 69 

ing one, or forgetting which was which, 
that would indicate a mind so utterly friv- 
olous that one could hardly conceive of it. 

The genuine, old-time Salem housekeeper 
realized that there was a conscience in her 
work. She took her cupboards seriously. 
To her there was nothing trivial about 
them. To do her duty by her cupboards 
was one of the most inviolable principles 
of her sober and decorous life. 

It took no ordinary brain to keep watch 
and ward over these cupboards. They 
were many in number. They were con- 
fusing as to size and shape. They pos- 
sessed the charm of the unexpected. One 
never knew quite when or where one 
should chance upon them. They were tall 
and narrow beside the fireplace, or low and 
chubby above it ; they lurked behind the 
wainscoting, like Polonius back of the arras. 
One of them was to be reached only by a 
step-ladder; another jolly pair occupied 
crannies under two deep window-seats. In 
one house was a cupboard which pretended 



JO Salem Cupboards. 

to be solid wall, but was really a deep re- 
cess for the concealment of firearms ; and 
in yet another was a narrow closet about 
which hung the horror of an old Ginevra- 
like legend of smothering to death. 

There was literally no end to the num- 
ber and variety of Salem cupboards. They 
possessed a charm quite their own, and 
this charm was felt to the utmost by the 
children, who were only occasionally al- 
lowed to view the treasures kept under 
strict lock and key by the high priestesses 
of these sacred nooks and shrines. 

Foremost in the memory of delightful 
Salem cupboards stands the dining-room 
closet of a second-cousin of ours, whom we 
called Cousin Susan. She was a widow of 
some fifty odd years, and kept house for a 
bachelor brother, who was a retired sea- 
captain. She was a round, trim, black- 
eyed woman, greatly afflicted with rheu- 
matism, for which reason she always 
walked with a cane. The cane was of 
some dark, foreign wood, highly polished, 



Salem Cupboards. yi 

and the top was carved to resemble a fal- 
con's head, with shining eyes of yellow 
glass. 

Cousin Susan was a kindly soul, who 
would, I think, have even been merry, had 
not the austerity of her youthful training 
warped her natural instincts and given her 
a certain rigidly virtuous air. She be- 
lieved very sincerely in the old-time maxim 
that "children should be seen, and not 
heard," and she had rather an alarming 
way at times of saying " Tut, tut ! " But 
she was really fond of young people, and 
whenever we went to see her she would 
say seductively, — 

**I wonder, now, if we could find any- 
thing nice in Cousin Susan's dining-room 
cupboard." 

And truly that person who failed to do 
so must have been hard to please ; for, in 
our eyes at least, that cupboard held a lit- 
tle of everything that was rare and de- 
lightful. 

A most delicious odor came forth when 



72 Salem Clipboards. 

the door was opened : a hint of the spici- 
ness of rich cake, a tingling sense of pre- 
served ginger, and a certain ineffable 
sweetness which no other closet ever pos- 
sessed, and which I know not how to de- 
scribe. It might well have proceeded from 
the walls and shelves of the cupboard it- 
self, for they were indeed emblems of pur- 
ity. The paint was varnished to a high 
degree of glossiness, and was so exqui- 
sitely kept as to look like white porcelain. 
The china here, as in all genuine Salem 
cupboards, was chiefly of the honest old 
blue Canton ware. There were shining 
piles of those plates which, while they are 
rather heavy to handle, always surprise 
one by being so thin at the edges. There 
were generous teacups like small bowls, 
squat pitchers with big noses, and a tureen 
whose cover had the head of a boar for a 
handle. And in all this the blue was dull 
and deep in tint, with a certain ill-defined, 
vaporous quality at the edges of the hues, 
and the white of the cool greenish tinge of 



Salem Cupboards. j^ 

a duck's egg. You can buy blue Canton 
to-day, but it is not old blue Canton. Such 
china is matchless now, but in this cup- 
board there were shelves of it. 

Cousin Susan possessed also another set 
of china, which she valued far above her 
blue. It was always singularly attractive 
to us as children, though I have come to 
believe that it is far less beautiful than the 
Canton. It was a pure, thin white ware, 
delicately fluted at the edges and deco- 
rated with little raised lilac sprigs. It was 
used only upon occasions of solemn com- 
pany tea-drinkings, and Cousin Susan al- 
ways washed it herself in her little cedar 
dish - tub. We children considered this 
china so choice and desirable that a bit 
of a broken saucer, which included one of 
the pale, tiny sprays, was cherished far 
above our real doll's dishes. We lent it 
from one to another, each of us keeping 
it for one day ; but it was always one of 
those unsatisfactory treasures of childhood 
for which we could never find any adequate 



y^ Salem Cupboards, 

use. We could think of nothing to do 
with this bit of china which seemed at all 
worthy of so lovely an object. 

At the left hand of Cousin Susan's 
shelves of china was a little cupboard with 
a diamond-paned glass door. This was the 
sanctum sanctoriimy — a cupboard within a 
cupboard ; and here, as one might have ex- 
pected, were stored the choicest treasures 
of all. It was not the domestic preserve 
closet. Cousin Susan was thrifty, and 
had good store of home-made dainties, but 
they were kept in the cool seclusion of a 
dark cellar store-room. This little glass 
cupboard held the stock of foreign sweet- 
meats : the round-shouldered blue jars, in- 
closed in a network of split bamboo, which 
contained the fiery, amber ginger ; the flat 
boxes of guava jelly, hot curry powders, 
chilli sauce, and choleric Bengal chutney. 
Here were two miniature casks of tam- 
arinds, jolly and black, Cousin Susan's 
favorites. She had a certain air of dis- 
approval toward most of these strange 



Salem Cupboards. 75 

conserves. " They are not good for little 
people," she averred ; and indeed she al- 
ways maintained that these ardent sweet- 
meats were fitter for the delectation of 
rude men than for the delicate palates of 
gentlewomen. Of tamarinds, however, 
Cousin Susan did approve. Properly di- 
luted with cool water, they made what she 
called a " very pretty drink." She was 
fond of sending a glass to any neighbor 
who was ill and feverish, and she was al- 
ways following our cousin the sea-captain 
about with a blue china bowl of the mix- 
ture, begging him to partake of it. 

" Susan, I hate tamarind- water," our 
cousin would protest, 

" It will cool your blood, William," his 
sister would urge. 

" But I don't want my blood cool. I 
want it warm," the captain would reply. 

As a general thing, however. Cousin Su- 
san came off triumphant. The captain 
grumblingly partook of his dose, and was 
always most generous in sharing it with 



y6 Salem Cupboards. 

us children. The beautiful little brown 
stones also fell to our lot, and we hoarded 
the useless things with great care, although 
it always seemed to us a great oversight 
on the part of nature that tamarind seeds 
did not have holes through them, that one 
might string them as beads. 

Cousin Susan's cupboard also contained 
stronger waters than tamarind, for side by 
side sat two corpulent cut-glass decanters, 
of which one was half filled with madeira 
wine, and the other with honest rum. A 
variety of sweet cakes was near by, to be 
served with the wine to any chance visitor. 
There were black fruit cake in a japanned 
box ; *' hearts and rounds " of rich yellow 
pound cake ; and certain delicate but inane 
little sponge biscuit, of which our cousin 
spoke by the older-fashioned name of diet 

— or, as she chose to pronounce it, " dier '* 

— bread. She always called the sponge 
cakes " little dier breads." Pound and fruit 
cakes were forbidden to our youth, but we 
might have our ladylike fill of " dier breads," 



Salem Cupboards. 77 

and also of delightful seed-cakes, which 
were cut in the shape of an oak-leaf, and 
were marvels of sugary thinness. 

These seed-cakes, by the bye, were kept 
in a jar which deserves at least a passing 
mention. It was, I suppose, some two or 
three feet high, though it looked to me 
then much higher. It was of blue-and- 
white china, and was fitted with a cover of 
dull silver. Tradition stated that some sea- 
faring ancestor had brought it home from 
Calcutta, filled with rock-candy. What 
was done with so large a supply of this 
confection I never knew. In those days 
choice sugar-plums were not as plenty as 
they have since become ; possibly at the 
time "Black-jacks" and "Gibraltars" were 
unknown, and this was Salem's only candy. 
At all events, it is somewhere recorded 
that the ship Belisarius brought from Cal- 
cutta " ten thousand seven hundred and 
sixty-seven pounds " of this same rocky 
and crystalline dainty. The fact of such a 
quantity of candy had for us children a 



yS Salem Cupboards. 

superb and opulent significance. What an 
idea, to have a choice confection, not by 
the stick or beggarly ounce, but by the jar- 
ful ! To think of going and casually help- 
ing one's self at will ! To imagine lifting 
that silver lid, and gazing unreproved into 
the sugary depths! Perhaps nice, white- 
haired spinsters used it in glittering lumps 
to sweeten their tea, or even served it at 
table by the plateful, as one might serve 
cake. Fancy exhausted itself in all sorts 
of delightful speculations. The whole le- 
gend had a profuse and mythical sound. 
It was like a fairy tale, a scene from Ara- 
bian Nights. It threw about the jar and 
the cupboard a mystic charm which time 
fails to efface. Even now a stick of spar- 
kling rock-candy has power to call up 
Cousin Susan's dining-room cupboard, its 
sweet, curious perfume, the quaint old sil- 
ver and blue china, and the huge turkey- 
feather fan, with its carved ivory handle 
and wreath of brilliant painted flowers, 
which hung on the inside of the door. 



Salem Cupboards. jg 

Out of the shadows of the past comes 
another memory, the picture of that strange 
old Salem homestead which has been made 
known to fame as the House of the Seven 
Gables. Some alterations have done away 
with two of the gables, but the old house 
is otherwise unchanged. In the days of 
my childhood its mistress was a lonely wo- 
man, about whom hung the mystery of one 
whose solitude is peopled by the weird 
visions that opium brings. We regarded 
her with something of awe, and I have 
wondered, in later days, what strange and 
eldritch beings walked with her about those 
shadowy rooms, or flitted noiselessly up 
and down the fine old staircase. 

The House of the Seven Gables was no 
open and joyous dwelling, where children 
loved to flock and run about at will. There 
was always an air of ceremony and dignity 
here, and a certain oppressive chill haunted 
the great low parlor, where the beams di- 
vided the ceiling into squares. We never 
paid a visit there except with some grown 



8o Salem Cupboards. 

person, and then sat throughout our stay, 
dangling our legs from our high chairs, 
and studying the quaintly stiff array of or- 
naments upon the lofty mantel. There 
were three covered Delft jars, two vases of 
flowers, and at either end a flask-shaped 
china vase. Between these taller articles 
were set shallow cups of painted china. 
Except in the flowers which filled the two 
middle vases, I never knew the arrange- 
ment of the mantel to differ. 

A large jar stood on the floor directly 
beneath the mantel, and ranged firmly 
about the room were several Dutch apple- 
tree chairs, with others of old-fashioned 
severity. On the right of the mantel was 
a delightful cupboard, whose tall, arched 
door often stood open, displaying a beauti- 
ful collection of old cut glass. We chil- 
dren used to describe this cupboard as 
*' hollow," it being, in fact, shaped like an 
apse. It had six semi-circular shelves, all 
of rich dark wood, against which the rows 
of splendid old glass glittered most bravely. 



Salem Cupboards. 8i 

There were graceful pitchers, shallow 
dishes, odd bowls, and flagons almost with- 
out number. On the floor of the cupboard 
a vast china punch-bowl was flanked by 
jars and vases each more enchanting than 
the other. I believe there was no truly- 
housewifely dam.e in Salem who did not 
adore and envy this wealth of crystal, but 
although we children admired it, it did not 
inspire us with any deeper feelings. It 
did not appeal to the youthful imagination. 
It was an array of frail and icy splendor, 
toward which our hearts could not warm ; 
not even the subtle suggestions of good 
cheer conveyed by delicate wine-glasses 
and portly old decanters could charm 
minds so unformed and simple as ours. 

Equally far removed from childish emo- 
tions, and even more splendid, was the 
chest of family silver, which we were some- 
times allowed to behold. How little did 
we think, as we viewed in admiring silence 
the fine heavy tankards, candlesticks, old 
two-tined silver forks, and antique porrin- 



82 Salem Clipboards, 

gers, that the fate of this haughty collec- 
tion was to be sold for mere old silver, and 
hustled without respect or reverence to a 
fiery death in the silversmith's crucible ! 
Sadly changed since that day is the House 
of the Seven Gables. The family silver is 
melted ; the antique-furnishings are scat- 
tered ; and gone, one knows not whither, 
the beautiful old glass, the glory of that 
tall, dark, " hollow " cupboard, and the pride 
of that strange mistress, who dreamed such 
dreams and saw such eerie visions in her 
great lonely chamber above-stairs. 

Another Salem cupboard, which is al- 
ways of pleasant memory, was in the house 
of one of my schoolmates, with whom I was 
spasmodically intimate. I am sorry to say 
that our visits to this closet were attended 
by a certain awful joy, from the fact that 
they always partook of a character surrep- 
titious, not to say sneaking. I was assured 
by my companion that her mother ap- 
proved of her investigations, but, at the 
same time, she casually mentioned that it 



Salem Cupboards. ^3 

was as well not to speak in the front entry, 
and that the fourth stair from the top 
creaked " so awful " that she usually made 
a point of stepping over it. 

The chamber containing the closet was 
a back room, seldom visited, and used only 
for the storage of trunks and boxes. The 
windows were fitted with shutters, in one 
of which a heart-shaped hole had been cut 
to admit a Uttle Ught. At the chimney 
end the room was wainscoted to the ceil- 
ing with wood which had never been 
painted, but which had taken a fine brown 
color from age and the fires which had 
once roared on the red-tiled hearth. The 
closet in this brown paneUng was one of 
the tall and narrow sort, and the shelves 
ran back very deep. It was of the same 
age-darkened wood within as without, and 
the door sagged on its hinges, so that we 
had to lift it together when we opened it ; 
otherwise we might have disturbed some 
of those people below who were so very 
wilUng we should be there. In this cup- 



84 Salem Clipboards. 

board were stored the possessions of a 
great-aunt of my friend. We had seen an 
ivory picture of her in the parlor many 
times, and we thought of her always as a 
thin young creature, with unnaturally large 
gray eyes, and a neck that looked too 
slender to bear the weight of the small 
head with its wealth of piled-up auburn 
hair. Her name was Isabel, and she had 
died in her early girlhood. Nobody seemed 
to remember much about her. Perhaps 
there was nothing to remember. Her 
miniature and her framed sampler were 
preserved with honor, but I think my 
friend and myself were the only ones who 
cared for the relics which were put away 
in this upper cupboard. 

There were a number of books of the 
floral-token order, containing sentimental 
verses and bits of elegant prose in praise 
of the Rose, the Lily, the Rainbow, and 
kindred subjects. They were embellished 
with the portraits of large-eyed and small- 
mouthed beauties with wonderful ringlets, 



Salem Cupboards. 8^ 

and the covers, though now faded, had 
once been gorgeous with gilding and floral 
designs. An unpleasant feature of these 
books was the fact that when one opened 
them tiny brown spiders went " tacking " 
crookedly across the pages. They were a 
highly objectionable sort of spiders, that 
did not at all mind being suddenly jammed 
between the pages, — for they were already 
too flat to be any flatter, — and that would 
just as lief run backward as forward with 
their ugly crab-like legs. 

On the same shelf with the books was 
the mahogany box of water-colors with 
which poor Isabel, who had accomplish- 
ments, forsooth, had made the prim little 
sketches which filled a portfolio. They 
were chiefly of the stencil-plate variety, 
done from boarding-school ''patterns," in 
clear colors, upon white, gilt-edged draw- 
ing-paper. There was one full-blown white 
rose, painted with exquisite neatness and 
delicacy, which was an especial favorite of 
ours ; but most of the designs were wreaths 



86 Salem Cupboards, 

and garlands of flowers surrounding verses 
of poetry copied in a fine hand. There 
was also on this shelf an album, wherein 
friends had written verses from the poets, 
and admirers had even ventured upon 
original tributes " To Isabel." 

In a bag of faded brocade was a tangle 
of pale sampler silks and crewels, not in 
that deliciously prim state of order which 
one would have expected of Isabel. Per- 
haps before our day some other child had 
tossed them over, even as we did, longing 
but not daring to appropriate them. Some- 
how, these silks and wools seemed so much 
prettier than those of any ordinary, down- 
stairs work-bag ; and certainly nothing 
could in any way compare with the basket 
of pieces of French prints with which Isa- 
bel had been " setting a Job's Patience." 
No modern cottons possess the faint deli- 
cacy of color and fabric of these old-time 
French calicoes. We used to delight in 
spreading the pieces out upon the floor, 
and choosing, in discreet whispers, what 
patterns we would like for gowns. 



Salem Cupboards. 8y 

Piles of yellow old newspapers filled the 
closet's upper shelves, and a box of thin 
gauze ribbons and a few pairs of silk 
gloves, long and Hmp, completed the list of 
Isabel's relics. It would be hard to de- 
scribe the singular charm which clung 
about these simple keepsakes, though 
probably, in great part, it was that the joy 
was a forbidden one. Be that as it may, 
there was a remarkable attraction exer- 
cised upon us by the silent chamber, the 
ray of sunlight which fell through the 
heart-shaped hole in the shutter, the nar- 
row brown cupboard, and the precious pos- 
sessions of poor gray-eyed Isabel, who to 
us could never be old. 

When, as children, we had been espe- 
cially good, we were sometimes rewarded 
by being sent upon a visit to a certain de- 
Hghtful maiden lady whom we called " Miss 
Mary-Ellen." It was really Miss Mary- 
Ellen whom we went to see, but we always 
hoped that her sister. Miss Eliza-Ann, 
would be at home, for Miss Eliza-Ann was 



88 Salem Cupboards. 

very strange and did surprising things. 
She was the elder of the two sisters, and 
might in these days have been called 
strong-minded, though the word then was 
" eccentric." She was a tall, long-armed 
woman, with a Roman nose, piercing black 
eyes, and a wild-looking brown wig which 
was always awry. This wig, by the way, 
possessed an awful fascination for us chil- 
dren, partly because it was a wig, and 
partly because Miss Eliza-Ann had a star- 
tling habit of suddenly plucking it from her 
head with a vindictive clutch, and casting 
it upon the floor, when she was absorbed 
in study, annoyed by the heat, or excited 
by discussion. One never knew at what 
moment she might do this, and therefore 
we always watched her with hopeful inter- 
est. She held great possibilities of amuse- 
ment. She became in time, for us, a sort 
of majestic Punch and Judy. Her head 
was as smooth and ivory-tinted as the os- 
trich Qgg which adorned the mantel, and 
when she doffed her wig her whole ap- 



Salem Cupboards, Sg 

pearance underwent the most extraordi- 
nary change. This habit was terribly an- 
noying to Miss Mary-Ellen, herself the 
most dainty and decorous of maiden la- 
dies. I can see yet the horrified way in 
which she would lift her hands, crying, — 
" Oh, Eliza- Ann, Eliza- Ann, how can 

you do so ? " 

" Because, Mary-Ellen," Miss Eliza-Ann 
would respond, in her slightly bass voice, 
**I am uncomfortable. My brain is too 
warm to think." 

'' Then at least put on a handkerchief," 
her sister would plead. " It really does n't 
seem decent ; before the children, too ! " 

To which Miss Eliza-Ann was apt to 
reply by her favorite exclamation, " Fid- 
dlesticks ! " 

However, she would eventually hang 
loosely over her head a red bandanna 
handkerchief, which certainly gave her a 
very witch-like and unpleasant look. She 
was a woman of superior and, for those 
days, unusual scholarly attainments. Her 



go Salem Cupboards. 

friends sighed and shook their heads a 
little over " poor Eliza-Ann." It would 
have been more truly feminine, they felt, 
had she not been quite so fine a linguist 
and mathematician. They could not thor- 
oughly approve of her being able to fit 
youths for Harvard. Her masculine fail- 
ings were, however, rather softened by the 
fact that Miss Eliza-Ann was a model of 
feminine modesty. In spite of the episodes 
of the wig, she was severely proper in her 
way, and a highly irreverent nephew has 
even been known to declare that his aunt 
always drew circles by a saucer, consider- 
ing dividers indelicate on account of their 
limbs. She had what was, in our eyes, a 
highly objectionable habit of unexpectedly 
pouncing upon us with mathematical co- 
nundrums. She delighted to spring upon 
us at unguarded moments, and ask trium- 
phantly, — 

" How much are twelve and nine ? and 
thirteen } and twenty-one ? and seven ? " 

And this abominable practice she would 



Salem Cupboards. 9/ 

sometimes pursue for an entire afternoon, 
waiting until we were happily forgetful and 
absorbed, and then suddenly attacking us 
once more with an explosive " And fifteen ? 
and nine ? " She called this pastime the 
" game of mental addition," but it was a 
sorry game for us. We used to dodge 
around corners to avoid meeting her on 
the street, for fear of being confronted 
with one of these baleful questions ; and I 
recollect encountering Miss Eliza-Ann at a 
party, when I was quite a grown girl, and 
having to struggle to persuade myself that 
she would no longer raise her thin fore- 
finger and say, ''And seven? and eight- 
een ? " 

As for Miss Mary-Ellen, she was in 
every way a contrast to her more brilliant 
sister. She was tall, but, being in delicate 
health, she was of fragile figure, and was 
never seen without a demure little shawl 
about her shoulders. She usually wore a 
a gown of very dark satin changing from 
green to black, and a long black silk apron. 



g2 Salem Cupboards. 

Her ordinary shawl was of fine white cash- 
mere, with a border in black and slaty-blue, 
and a single large palm-leaf ornamented 
the corner which hung exactly in the mid- 
dle of the back. She had other shawls of 
much gorgeousness, which appeared only 
upon festive occasions. Miss Mary-Ellen's 
face was almost as pale as her lovely silver 
hair, which she wore in little curls each 
side of her temples. Her cap was white, 
with tiny bows of lavender ribbon, and her 
wide worked collar was fastened by a pin 
containing hair from the heads of her 
father and mother. I think that she had 
the very sweetest and most lovable with- 
ered old face in the world. I dare say she 
was no beauty, but we firmly believed her 
one. She was so delicately and exqui- 
sitely fragrant and immaculate that it was 
like caressing a bunch of garden pinks to 
put your cheek against hers. Above all, 
her countenance so beamed with a gentle 
and innocent kindliness, a sort of beneficent 
love and charity for all mankind, that we 



Salem Cupboards. 9^ 

children could not choose but adore her. 
She was not a scholar, like her sister, but 
she possessed various pretty accomplish- 
ments. She directed the house, and, when 
her health permitted, she always made the 
"diet bread." It used to be a belief in 
Salem that it took a lady's hand to make 
really elegant sponge-cake. Heavier sorts 
of dainties might be trusted to servants, 
but only a gentlewoman could fitly be ex- 
pected to take the responsibility of this 
most delicate of sweets. So true was this 
that if a once famous school in Salem did 
not actually include sponge-cake in its cur- 
riculum, at least it is true that no young 
lady's education was considered finished 
until she had made a loaf of irreproachable 
** diet bread." Miss Mary-Ellen's was fa- 
mous even in Salem. She could also fash- 
ion very pretty needle-books, and could 
paint bright colored butterflies on Chinese 
rice-paper. Her delicate health confined 
her much to the house, and she dearly 
loved to have children visit her, if they 



g4 Salem Cupboards. 

were good. She could not bear boister- 
ous conduct, and quarrels and bickerings 
caused her deep distress. It should be 
said, however, that we seldom displayed 
any but our best behavior to gentle Miss 
Mary-Ellen, and she, on her part, used to 
exert herself for our enjoyment. We were 
allowed to play with the curious ivory 
chessmen which her great-uncle Joseph 
had brought from Calcutta ; she let us look 
over her piece-bags, and choose one bit of 
silk or satin for ourselves ; and last, and 
best of all, she showed us her sitting-room 
cupboard. 

The sitting-room was above-stairs, as 
Miss Mary-Ellen was often too feeble to 
go down for many weeks together. Here 
was Miss Eliza-Ann's severe study-table, 
with its globe and books ; and here was 
her sister's little work-stand, whose deep 
green-baize drawer held her crewel work 
and fine sewing ; and here, in a cupboard 
in the white wainscoting, were stored away 
many curious and delightful objects. 



Salem Cupboards. 95 

Miss Mary-Ellen disliked to have her be- 
longings handled, and during the inspec- 
tion we were seated opposite our hostess, 
and cautioned to keep our hands clasped. 
This air of mild ceremony only added to 
the delight of " seeing Miss Mary-Ellen's 
things." It was in this cupboard, to begin 
with, that she kept her shawls. There 
was one of creamy China crepe, heavy with 
silken embroidery ; another was of scarlet 
camel's hair, of such fabulous fineness that 
it might well have been one of those fairy- 
tale fabrics which were so easily tucked 
away in a nutshell. In our eyes, however, 
the most beautiful were a pair of lovely 
shoulder shawls from Canton, which dwelt 
in scented seclusion in a sandal-wood box. 
They were always called '* the pina shawls," 
but their softness was unlike the wiry tex- 
ture of any pina cloth. One was white, 
with the clear and dazzling whiteness of 
spun glass, the groundwork as sheer as a 
frost web, and the pattern of silvery lilies 
gleaming with a silky sheen. The com- 



g6 Salem Cupboards. 

panion shawl was of a charming shade of 
rose-pink, and this was also shot through 
with a design of silken flowers. These 
shawls, our friend told us, she wore with 
her black satin gown when she gave a 
" tea-company ; " and she added cannily, 
while putting them to bed in their folds of 
soft Chinese paper, that she always wore 
them by turns, so that one should last just 
as long as the other. 

On the second shelf of the cupboard 
was a small tea-chest, which was appar- 
ently full of certain strange beads. Our 
hostess could not remember whether her 
great-uncle had said that they had been 
brought from Canton or Calcutta, but she 
knew that they came from somewhere in 
the magical East. Each bead was of the 
size of a large pea, and was grooved lon- 
gitudinally. They were made of a fine clay, 
and were dull blue in color, with an odd 
glistening effect, as if silver dust might 
have been mixed with the clay. They 
were perfumed, and when they became 



Salem Cupboards. 97 

warm in the hand or on the neck gave forth 
a musky sweetness, faint and enchanting. 
Miss Mary-Ellen gave us each a string of 
these beads, and I never happen upon 
them to this day without being touched by 
a sense of mystery. They suggest strange 
Hindoo rites, Nautch dances, and women 
with dusky throats ; they never have lost 
the suggestive charm of that Orient from 
whence they came. 

Among the most pleasing of Miss Mary- 
Ellen's relics were her fans, of which she 
possessed a variety. There was one of 
carved sandal-wood inlaid with pearl and 
silver, and one of ivory, as fragile as yellow 
lace ; but our delight was an old French 
fan of light blue silk, whereon a little mar- 
quis in silver and pink offered a rose to 
a dainty marquise in puffs and patches, 
while, just beyond, three maids, with arms 
entwined, forever danced a minuet measure, 
and about all were pale garlands of faded 
roses and little naked Loves. We loved 
the pretty marquise and the dancing trio, 



gS Salem Cupboards. 

and much preferred this fan even to the 
Chinese one of white feathers, oddly dec- 
orated with little leaves and blossoms in 
tinsel and gay-colored embossed paper. 

And, speaking of feathers, I am re- 
minded of one other drawback, beside the 
game of mental addition, to the complete 
enjoyment of our visits to this pleasant 
house. This drawback was Miss Mary- 
Ellen's parrot, than which a more thor- 
oughly vicious and disreputable old bird 
was never seen. As far as I know, he had 
absolutely no claim to respect or even tol- 
eration, except the fact that his mistress 
loved him. He was ragged and battered 
in appearance, and his colors, like his mor- 
als, were low in tone. He had always 
about him an air of having been out all 
night, and, so far from repenting, of rev- 
eling in a sense of his own evil ways. He 
had a wicked eye, and an unpleasant habit 
of roosting upon the chair-rails and unex- 
pectedly pecking at the legs of us children. 
His disposition was morose and vengeful 



Salem Cupboards. gg 

He loved nobody. He only endured his 
mistress for the sake of the loaf-sugar she 
gave him. Between him and Miss Eliza- 
Ann a deadly dislike existed. As a gen- 
eral thing, he sulked and glowered on the 
back of a small sofa in the corner. Here 
I suppose him to have spent his time in 
reviewing dark episodes in his past life, 
possibly with some degree of sullen satis- 
faction. Occasionally he varied this occu- 
pation by making a sortie to attack Miss 
Eliza-Ann's ankles, for which he enter- 
tained the greatest aversion. I never 
knew anything to afford the least amuse- 
ment to Polly except Miss Eliza-Ann's 
clutching off her wig ; and even in this 
case I think it was not so much mirth at 
a ludicrous action as it was diabolic glee 
at the dreadful guy the poor lady looked, 
and fiendish enjoyment of her sister's dis- 
tress. It is certain, however, that it did 
cause him pleasure, for he would burst into 
peals of rasping, metallic laughter, sway- 
ing insanely on his perch, drawing long 



lOo Salem Cupboards. 

breaths, and apparently becoming quite 
exhausted with his mirth. If Miss Eliza- 
Ann made an attempt to touch him, he 
would hastily sidle away out of reach, 
and resume his hoarse, derisive laughter in 
safety. Our gentle friend was made very 
unhappy by these exhibitions, which usu- 
ally ended by Miss Eliza-Ann's assuming 
the red bandanna, and seating herself at 
her writing with an injured air, while Polly 
clucked and glowered from his corner, and 
Miss Mary-Ellen hastily brought forth some 
new curiosity to attract our wandering at- 
tention. 

One thing of which we never tired was 
a pair of Chinese picture-books, with paint- 
ings on rice paper in clear and brilliant 
colors. There was, of course, no attempt 
at perspective, and we were much enter- 
tained by the little mandarins walking 
calmly about in the sky, quite over the 
heads of the jugglers with their yellow 
balls and the women under flat-topped 
umbrellas. A pair of carved ivory chop- 



Salem Cupboards, loi 

sticks also appeared during the display of 
Chinese curiosities, and Miss Eliza-Ann, 
from her corner, threw in a few darkly- 
learned remarks concerning Confucius, to 
which we listened with respect and va- 
cuity. Miss Eliza-Ann was always ready 
enough to give us useful information, and 
she was generally called upon to tell us 
about a curious Japanese bonze in painted 
clay, with naked chest and stomach. It 
had an ugly, wrinkled face, and was squat- 
ted on its feet. Miss Eliza-Ann explained 
all about it in very long words, but we only 
gathered that the bonze was a holy man or 
priest, and we secretly thought it a pity 
that while his robes were otherwise so vo- 
luminous, so much of his person should be 
exposed to the inclemency of the weather. 
A department more modern, but not less 
attractive, of Miss Mary-Ellen's cupboard 
was the shelf of knick-knacks which kind 
friends had given her, and which she 
hoarded in little boxes and baskets with 
almost childish pleasure. Many of these 



702 Salem Cupboards. 

things were oddly trivial as gifts to a 
grown woman, but the truth was that 
many of Miss Mary-Ellen's friends had 
evidently never realized her growing up ; 
at least, they still took a simple delight in 
bringing to her tiny fancy boxes, miniature 
fans, baskets of pink sugar, and micro- 
scopic books, all of which were received 
as they were given, and preserved with 
great care. 

On rare, memorable days our hostess 
would gladden us by bestowing upon us 
some of these desirable objects. 

" Let me see," she would muse, regard- 
ing fondly a tiny bird-cage of gilded wire, 
or a barley baby tucked snugly into a 
sugary cradle. " I have had this five years, 
and it has given me much pleasure. I 
think I can spare it now to give pleasure 
to somebody else. You may have it, my 
dear, and I hope you will keep it care- 
fully." 

The only two of these presents which 
lasted us for any length of time were a 



Salem Cupboards. lo^ 

little bonnet of yellow sugar, decorated 
with a wreath of miniature roses, and a 
small book. The bonnet was my sister's, 
and was kept for some years in a box of 
cotton, until one hapless day we found it 
broken, by the cold we always supposed. 
Its owner shed bitter tears over the loss, 
while her more practical sister suggested 
that, since it was broken, we might as well 
see how it tasted. This we proceeded to 
do, and the result was pasty and disap- 
pointing in the extreme. My book was a 
small black volume, entitled Frank and 
Flora, being the history of a pair of chil- 
dren of such an aggressive and rampant 
state of morality that but for the fact that 
it told what they had to eat and drink 
upon every occasion it would have been 
utterly unendurable. 

We always loved Miss Mary-Ellen's gifts, 
however, for they took a grace from the 
gentle giver, and a charm beyond belief 
from the delightful cupboard which once 
had been their home. 



104 Salem Cupboards. 

Dear Miss Mary-Ellen and her sister 
have long since gone — a loving but in- 
congruous pair — to a better world. I am 
quite certain that the same sort of after-life 
could never satisfy them both. The quaint 
old house yet stands, but it is occupied by 
strangers. They may be, and doubtless 
are, the most delightful of people, and yet 
it seems to me all wrong that they should 
live in that house. The world is out of 
joint with all these changes. I would not 
peep into the old mansion, had I the 
chance, for I like to fancy everything still 
as it used to be : yet I cannot help some- 
times wondering who owns the parrot's 
corner now ; what furniture has deposed 
Miss Eliza-Ann's table, with its books and 
globe ; above all, what these new folk keep 
in Miss Mary-Ellen's cupboard. 




MY COUSIN THE CAPTAIN. 




HERE lived in Salem twenty years 
ago — and in fact the remnant lin- 
gers still — a race of men who be- 
lieved in nothing else in all the world so 
much as they believed in the supremacy of 
their town as the great maritime centre of 
America ; I do not know that they would 
not have said of the world. 

These were the old sea-captains and 
sailing-masters, — men who had known 
Salem in her highest and proudest days of 
mercantile prosperity : when her wharves 
were bustling scenes of unlading and of 
shipping cargoes ; when the harbor was the 
gathering place of quaintly rigged ketches 
and great East Indiamen laboring in under 
clouds of canvas ; when Derby Street was 
all alive with captains with their sea-legs 
still on, and the tall warehouses were 



io6 My Cousin the Captain. 

crammed to the eaves with spicy wares 
from China and the Philippines ; when the 
merchants were bustling up and down 
Water Street, hugging themselves with 
gratulation over happy voyages and pros- 
perous ventures ; when Kit's dance-house 
was filled to overflowing with thirsty sail- 
ors, intent upon spending their pay quickly 
that it might not burn their pockets ; 
when, in point of fact, old Salem was old 
Salem, in the halcyon days before the 
great tide of the East India trade had 
ebbed away, leaving Derby Street stranded, 
its brown wharves given over to rats and 
the slow lap of water among the dull green 
piles, the toppling warehouses transformed 
into Irish tenements, and the harbor sadly 
empty, save for occasional slow barges, 
black and foul, laden with coal for Beverly 
or hides for Lynn. 

The change time has wrought is melan- 
choly, even to the unconcerned outsider, 
but to the old captains it is like the de- 
struction of Babylon or the fall of Paradise. 



My Cousin the Captain. loy 

That the writer possesses, although of 
course in a humble degree, some of the 
genuine sea-lover's regret for the loss of 
the old mercantile glory of Salem is due 
to the acquaintance in childhood of one of 
the most delightful specimens of the an- 
cient sailing-masters who ever trod deck 
under foot, or brought rich cargoes into 
Salem harbor. 

This was Captain William Rockwell, 
who by virtue of a distant connection with 
my family always went by the name of 
Cousin William. He was a man over sev- 
enty years of age, but the salt of the sea 
he had so long traversed had preserved in 
him a sort of immortal youth, and he was 
still hale and comely. His face was ruddy, 
and his hair, which was of silvery white- 
ness and thick and vigorous in growth, 
was brushed back without parting, and, 
when its length permitted, bound with a 
black ribbon, to keep it out of the way. 
The question of length of hair was always 
a disputed one between Cousin William 



io8 My Cousin the Captain. 

and his sister Susan. The Captain con- 
tended that long hair was bettyish and in 
the way, while Cousin Susan maintained 
that cropped hair was foppish and unbe- 
coming to the dignity of a man of the 
Captain's years. As Cousin Susan per- 
formed the office of hair-cutter, she had 
rather an unfair advantage of her brother, 
and it is worthy of remark that his hair 
was generally long enough to be bound by 
its ribbon. His eyebrows, in striking con- 
trast to his rubicund face and snowy hair, 
were as black as if newly penciled in cray- 
* on, while his eyes, also black, would have 
stricken awe to our childish souls but for 
the humorous spark which dwelt within 
and, in conj unction with a benevolent fore- 
head and those lines of by-gone laughter 
which inclose the mouth in a merry paren- 
thesis, lent to his face an expression of 
good will toward all and of resolute con- 
tent with everything about him. 

In his active days, Captain Rockwell had 
made many voyages in the interest of Sa- 



My Cousin the Captain. 109 

lem merchants, beginning as a boy of fif- 
teen, and leaving the seas only when his 
hereditary enemy, the rheumatic gout, 
overcame him and unfitted him for further 
active labor. His own cruises had been 
chiefly to India and China, and his time 
was that following the death of the famous 
Elias Haskett Derby, — the time when 
William Gray and Joseph Peabody were 
sending their great ships to Cathay and 
the India Ocean, and later when Captain 
John Bertram was making those splendid 
voyages whose record reads like a fairy 
tale. Cousin William had, however, not 
only a thorough understanding of the en- 
terprises and the state of commerce in his 
own time, but he had made a study of Sa- 
lem's mercantile and marine history back 
to its opening chapter. He could, I be- 
lieve, have given a clear and correct ac- 
count of the voyages of Philip English 
and Richard Derby. He knew the ton- 
nage of the prominent vessels, the name 
of the owners and sailing-masters, the car- 



no My Cousin the Captain. 

goes and the profits. To all this statisti- 
cal knowledge he added a fund of lore of a 
more romantic if less reliable sort, which 
made him the most entertaining of com- 
panions to us children. It was always 
something of a problem to us just how 
much of the marvelous adventure on high 
seas which Cousin William related he 
really believed himself ; and this we never 
could discover to the day of his death. 
The old gentleman was so decidedly testy 
if questioned as to the veracity of any of 
his extraordinary tales, that we very early 
learned not to ask, " Is it really true } " 

When free from his rheumatism he was 
of a social and friendly disposition, and 
fond of receiving visits from us children. 
He instructed us in the art of making 
sailor knots, and it was one of his pet vex- 
ations that packages from the shops were 
tied up in such meaningless and slovenly 
ways. I can still tie as he taught me "a 
bowline on a bight," but I never do it with- 
out being transported to Cousin Susan's 



My Cousin the Captain. iii 

tidy back parlor, and seeing once more the 
bit of cord on Cousin William's knee and 
the blue anchor on the inside of his hir- 
sute wrist, an adornment which was made 
in his cabin-boy days, and of which he was 
ever afterward somewhat ashamed. 

If, as I have said. Cousin William was 
in good health, he always welcomed our 
arrival most kindly ; but if we opened the 
door to see him seated with his bandaged 
legs supported upon a chair, his ruddy 
face contracted to an awful scowl, and 
to hear him say, " Look out for the Old 
Man from Zanzibar ; he eats youngsters ! " 
then indeed we softly but precipitately 
closed the door and withdrew in haste, for 
we knew that the Captain's tormentor had 
him in his grasp, and that he wished to be 
left in peace to battle with his pain. Who 
this Old Man from Zanzibar was we never 
satisfactorily knew, but the very vagueness 
of our information concerning him clothed 
him with added terrors, and he was one of 
the most successful of the bogies of my 
childhood. 



112 My Cousin the Captain, 

Aside from his attacks of gout, the Cap- 
tain lived a life of easy and methodical 
monotony. He rose early, breakfasted at 
seven, walked down to the Athenaeum and 
back, read his Boston paper, ate his dinner 
at twelve, then took a short nap upon the 
back parlor sofa, first carefully protecting 
its foot by spreading across it a thin brown 
shawl kept for that purpose. After his 
nap he repaired to Cousin Susan's sitting- 
room up-stairs, where he read aloud to her 
for one hour, and then he went down to 
Broad Street to make a call upon a mar- 
ried niece and her children. Tea was 
drank decorously at half-past five o'clock, 
and after tea Cousin William's pet crony, 
Captain Eliphalet Nicholson, came in to 
spend the evening. 

Captain Nicholson offered in every re- 
spect a striking contrast to his host. He 
was a thin, dry, weazened man, as lively in 
his movements as a cricket. He wore a 
rusty brown wig, and always told us chil- 
dren that his own hair was blown out by 



My Cousin the Captain. ii^ 

the roots in a terrible gale at the Cape 
of Good Hope. Although, as this would 
prove, occasionally jocose, his disposition 
was irascible and his temper quite uncer- 
tain ; wherefore we children, little syco- 
phants that we were, tried to conceal the 
fact that we were really shy of him by 
laughing with obsequious e%erness when- 
ever he made a jest He had a tart tongue 
and a hot and spicy manner in conversa- 
tion ; and I think it not altogether un- 
likely that the many vast cargoes of pep- 
per which he had brought from Sumatra 
had had their effect upon his disposition. 

It was rather difficult to account for the 
firm friendship which these two old cap- 
tains had for each other, since they held 
the same opinion upon scarcely any points. 
They were forever arguing upon this or 
that, and never agreeing ; and as both 
were somewhat stubborn old gentlemen, 
it was no uncommon occurrence for the 
choleric Captain Nicholson to arise in his 
wrath and betake himself out of the house, 



114 My Cousin the Captain, 

vowing never to enter it again ; a proceed- 
ing which never in the least disturbed the 
equanimity of Cousin William. He knew 
what to expect, and he was never disap- 
pointed, for the next evening would see 
Captain Nicholson in his usual seat beside 
the round table of polished mahogany, as 
lively, as argumentative, and as peppery 
as ever. 

At eight o'clock exactly, a maid-servant 
brought in a tray set with tumblers, a 
lemon, a silver nutmeg-grater, a silver knife 
and a decanter of rum. Captain Nichol- 
son then solemnly spread his blue and 
white handkerchief over his knees and 
carefully divided the lemon into halves. 
Cousin William with equal care measured 
a portion of sugar into the tumbler, and 
on the sugar grated a shower of nutmeg. 
Each then measured out his own allowance 
of rum, and here the paths divided ; for 
Cousin William contended that the lemon 
could not be properly blended unless it 
were mixed in before the addition of the 



My Cousin the Captain. ii^ 

hot water, while his friend stoutly held 
that the lemon was ruined in flavor by 
having hot water poured on top of it. 
Time had, however, somewhat softened 
this disagreement, so that each captain 
went his own way ; and there was a sus- 
pension of hostilities while the two old 
gentlemen sat seriously sipping their hot 
rum and water on either side of the round 
table. 

There was to us children an inexhausti- 
ble fascination in the conversation of these 
two mariners, who had come after yeaj?s of 
peril and gallant adventure on the seas to 
the snug harborage of Cousin Susan's back 
parlor. Even when they were not actually 
telling stories to us, it was still one of the 
treats of our childhood to be allowed to 
sit in some obscure corner, unheeded and 
unseen, and listen silently. There was 
about their conversation all the " mystery 
and magic of the sea," the flavor of adven- 
ture and danger ; there was excitement in 
the mention, not then so commonplace as 



ii6 My Cousin the Captain. 

now, of strange lands and far-away ports ; 
there was poetry in the names of the ves- 
sels, — the ship Lotus, the Black Warrior, 
the brig Persia, the Light Horse, the 
Three Friends, arid the great Grand Turk. 
There was, too, a charm about those car- 
goes. They were no commonplace bales of 
merchandise, but were suggestive in their 
very names of the sweet, strange odors of 
that East from which they came. There 
was food for the imagination in the men- 
tion of those ship-loads of gum copal from 
Madagascar and Zanzibar; of hemp, iron 
and duck from Russia ; of Bombay cotton, 
of ginger, pepper, coffee and sugar-candy 
from India; of teas, silks and nankeens 
from China ; salt from Cadiz, and fruits 
from the ports of the Mediterranean. 

We children used to listen as to a fairy 
tale to stories of the unlading of those 
great Indiamen whose cargoes actually 
scented the air with spicy fragrance ; but 
I think that pepper was the favorite cargo 
of Captain Nicholson, and he used to tell 



My Cousin the Captain, iiy 

with much delight of the secret voyages to 
Sumatra. 

" Pepper," he would say, " grew wild at 
Sumatra, and nobody knew it till Captain 
Jonathan Carnes was man enough to find 
it out. Why, sir, I dare say if it had n't 
been for " — 



[Here the MS. ends abruptly. The notes 
made for its continuance are scanty. There is 
jotted down a reference to the rescue by Cap- 
tain Ingersoll, on a return voyage from the 
West Indies with a cargo of rum, of the mas- 
ter and mate of the EngUsh schooner Amity, 
whose crew had mutinied and set these officers 
adrift in a boat. After his arrival in Salem the 
English captain was sitting one day with Mr. 
Elias Haskett Derby in the counting-room of 
the latter, and while using the spy-glass saw 
his own vessel in the offing. Mr. Derby at 
once manned one of his brigs, armed it with 
a couple of cannon, and, taking with him the 
Englishman, quickly and neatly recaptured the 
Amity, 



1 18 My Cousin the Captain, 

There is also noted the pathetic story of an 
old sea-captain whose only daughter died in 
early womanhood, and who on every anniver- 
sary of her birth-night set in the window of 
her deserted chamber a lighted lamp to burn 
through all the dark hours as a token of his 
undying love and remembrance. 

These scattered memoranda follow : — 

*' Dangers of coral reefs and murderous Ma- 
lays. 

*• The old fellow who recommended his house 
because the chips would not rattle in the parti- 
tions. 

" The dinner of the E. I. Marine Co. — Car- 
rying the President through the streets in a 
palanquin." 

There is also a note of an intention of com- 
menting upon the fact that the first slaves 
which came to New England were brought in 
the Salem ship Desire ; of speaking of the 
enormous importation of New England rum 
and Virginian tobacco into the west coast re- 
gions of Africa by Salem merchants ; and 
there is a reference to the quaint conceit of 
Benjamin Pickman, who, in recognition of the 



My Cousin the Captain. iig 

fact that his fortune had been made by the ex- 
portation of codfish to the West Indies, and 
with a noble disregard of the obvious jests 
likely to be made at the expense of any aristo- 
cratic pretensions on the part of his family, set 
a carved and gilded effigy of that fish on the 
side of each stair in the front hall of his man- 
sion on Essex Street. 

It is hardly to be doubted that had we been 
given more of the conversation of Cousin 
William and his friend Captain Nicholson we 
should have heard discourse of the doings of 
the Salem privateers both in the Revolution 
and in the War of 1812. One so familiar with 
Salem's glorious record as Captain Rockwell 
could not fail of the ability to tell with zest 
and completeness the tale of the Gen. Picker- 
ing, Captain Haraden, master, which had that 
gallant fashion of sailing up to craft beside 
which she " looked like a long-boat by the 
side of a ship," and commanding them to sur- 
render to an American frigate with so absolute 
an air that they generally did it on the spot. 
He would have made much of that famous 
battle between the Gen. Pickering and the 



120 My Cousin the Captain. 

British cutter Achilles, so near the Spanish 
coast that a hundred thousand spectators 
viewed the conflict from the shore with as 
much relish as if it had been a bull-fight. He 
would have reveled, too, in the deeds of the 
great Grand Turk in 1815, and would have 
had his joke over that brig's ungallant wrest- 
ing from the Active Jane of her " seven bags 
of specie, containing 14,000 mill rees," and 
still more cruel scuttling her afterward. He 
would have repeated tales of suffering told 
him by sailors held in slavery by the fierce Al- 
gerines, while of pirates and strange escapes 
and monsters of the deep or of wild lands his 
knowledge must have been inexhaustible. He 
must have known the tonnage and the rig of 
all the proud craft set afloat by Retire Becket 
and Enos Briggs, and he was probably not 
without a decided personal opinion of all the 
masters who had sailed therein. 

How much or how little of this it was Eleanor 
Putnam's intention to set down it is impossi- 
ble now to determine. What was written is 
little more than an introduction to what was 
intended ; but to this and to all death made 
an end.] 




